Finding The Fourth Wheel
by SummerEliza
Summary: Sadie and Katie have been inseparable for the majority of their conscious lives. But at the Playa, a bad fight breaks them apart, leaving both girls hurt and giving them a chance to finally notice others outside their friendship.
1. Act I: Unicycle

A/N: Why are there not more Sadie and Katie stories? There is an absolutely unforgivable lack of them on this site. I'm remedying that by giving you guys an awesome one. Trust me, it's awesome. Anyway, let me quickly explain the format. This story will be divided into Acts. Each Act will have its own separate title and chapters. Sadly, there might be small gaps in update times between Acts because that's when I'll take my breaks from this story.

Without further ado, I give you:

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**Finding The Fourth Wheel**

Prologue: Why Do They Go For The Skinny Girls?

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_Two little girls pulled a huge toy car out of a garage, with no adult in sight. One was pale and a little chubby while the other was deeply tanned and slender but they both wore identical outfits. The chubby one paused a moment to tug at her ill-fitting pink t-shirt but the other called for her to keep up. They managed to drag the car out onto the sidewalk and hopped inside, giggling like maniacs. _

_The tanned girl had received the Barbie DreamCar for her birthday, after both girls had begged for it constantly for ages. So obviously, she got rights to be the first driver. The two jammed their matching cats-eye sunglasses on their faces and she pressed the gas, sending them straight into the hedge. This sent them into new fits of giggles. _

_When they got out of the hedge, they managed to drive down the sidewalk in a somewhat straight line. They kept driving for what seemed like forever, until they were past the limit for where they were allowed to go by their parents. But neither of their mothers were watching them that day, because both had assumed that the other girl's mother was watching them. _

_In the end, the only reason they stopped was because they nearly ran into someone. He had run across their path, trying to grab a basketball before it went into the street. They both screamed in terror and the car went into a hedge for the second time that day. _

_He helped them pull the car out of the hedge and introduced himself as Keith. After the first word came out of his mouth, they were both already lovestruck. He was practically the peak of eight-year-old perfection, in their opinions. He was tan, his small nose was slightly freckled, and he was just a little bit taller than them. But the more they talked to him, the more it became clear that he was more interested in the tan girl than the chubby one. _


	2. Part 1: Half a BFFFL

**Chapter One: Half a BFFFL**

* * *

"I think I see the boat!" Bridgette said excitedly, leaning an unsafe distance off the pier. She deflated quickly and took a step back onto safer ground. "Never mind, that's a bird."

"Oooh! I'm so excited to see who's been eliminated this time!" Sadie said, clapping her hands together cheerleader-style. "Right, Katie?" Nothing but silence greeted her. The other half of the BFFFLs was squeezing as close to her new boyfriend, Trent, as was humanly possible. Sadie sighed and took a step away from them. She bumped into Noah, nearly pushing him off the tiny pier.

"Hey, watch it," Noah snapped.

Sadie giggled. His annoyed face was just _so_ funny. "Sorry, Noah."

"I hope it's Geoff," Bridgette wished aloud, crossing her fingers tightly for luck.

"Don't you want him to win?" Sadie asked. Before Katie was eliminated, Sadie had been rooting for her to win. Even if the relationships were a little different, the principle was generally the same.

"He doesn't need to win _another_ season," Bridgette explained, her eyes still glued on the horizon. "Besides, I want to spend some quality time with him now that we're back at the Playa."

"Quality hot tub time?" Noah said, his eyebrows quirked in oh-so-faint amusement.

Bridgette laughed, not denying it. "I think that's the boat," she said, pointing at a speck in the distance.

"Or is it another bird?" Noah said sarcastically.

"Nope," Bridgette said, completely immune to Noah's particular brand of sarcasm. "It's the boat this time!" Quite soon after this observation, the rickety old boat everyone remembered not-so-fondly from the first season puttered to a stop close to the pier. "Leshawna!" Bridgette cried, almost as excited as she would have been if it was Geoff.

"Hey, girl," Leshawna said, stepping onto the pier. "I've got to say, it is good to be back."

"Why'd they vote you off?" Sadie asked. "I was almost sure Heather was going to be voted off, the jerk."

"Immunity," Leshawna said, shrugging helplessly.

"Yo, yo, yo!" another voice yelled from the boat. "I hope the Playa is ready for the Zeke!"

"Boy, you got eliminated 'cuz of stuff like that," Leshawna said. She looked utterly fed up with the blinged-up homeschooled boy stepping off the boat.

"Stuff like what, eh?" Ezekiel said, the confusion apparent on his face.

"If I hear one more word of ghetto slang comin' out of your little white boy mouth, I'm gonna-" Leshawna cut herself off and glared fiercely at Ezekiel. The homeschooled homeboy recoiled and fingered his bling.

"Wait, both of you got eliminated?" Trent said, finally looking up from whatever he and Katie were whispering about.

"Double elimination," Leshawna explained.

"Any news of Geoff?" Bridgette asked, leading Leshawna towards the hotel.

The group of people standing on the pier gradually dispersed, with most of them heading back to the hotel. Sadie considered following after Trent and Katie, but decided against it. She had already played the third wheel enough in the past few days.

Sadie was the first to be eliminated in the current season of Total Drama Island, which was a half-season set during winter break. The two BFFFLs parted tearfully at the Dock of Shame in a scene that was sure to have dramatic music set to it when the show aired and Sadie spent the next week trying to keep her spirits up. When Katie showed up about a week and a half later, she spent the few days between her elimination and Trent's subsequent elimination recounting every detail of their new relationship. Even Sadie, who normally had infinite patience where Katie was concerned, was ready to scream every time Trent's name was mentioned.

"Yoo oo'kay?" Ezekiel asked, startling Sadie out of her thoughts.

Sadie realized that she had been staring into the beach waves broodingly. She tore her eyes away from the surf and nodded. "I'll show you where you can get your room key."

"Thanks, eh," he said. "Yoo're a real fly chicken."

Sadie began to laugh uncontrollably. Ezekiel had no idea what he had said.

* * *

After leaving Ezekiel at the front desk, Sadie headed for the dining room to get dinner. It usually took her a good ten minutes to walk there. The hotel was huge. Ridiculously huge for a place that, at the maximum, only held about twenty people. Sadie walked through the silent hallways, going in the direction she hoped led to the dining room. The walk gave her enough time to build up a large amount of dread.

The feeling came largely from the fact that she was undoubtedly going to spend yet another meal with the happy couple- namely, Trent and Katie. The three always sat at the table furthest from the others. Katie picked the table, of course. Sadie suspected it was because she wanted the meals with 'her man' to be semi-private. Unfortunately, Sadie didn't count as somebody that would bother their privacy. She was practically an extension of Katie herself.

In the end, the distance between their table and everyone else forced Sadie to eat her meal silently while Katie and Trent did mushy couple stuff and pretty much ignored her. Not that she could sit at anybody else's table. The thought was almost blasphemous and hadn't even occurred to her.

She paused to check one of the large maps the hotel had been forced to put up after one of their staff had gotten lost for two days. (Not that Sadie had ever seen any of the so-called staff. The dirty towels disappeared and the beds were made, but nobody had ever caught sight of a single maid. Or any other staff member, for that matter.) If the large red dot with 'YOU ARE HERE' written over it was any indication, she was facing the opposite direction from the dining hall. At least, she hoped so. Reading maps was not a skill she had ever completely mastered.

She flipped around and walked until she found a pair of familiar giant, gilded doors. With some difficulty, she dragged the door open and slipped through. The huge amount of noise pulling open the door created always made everyone in the room look at the door. The five people in the massive room looked up, concluded that it was only Sadie, and returned to whatever they were talking about. Sadie helped herself to the buffet set up close to the door and carried her food across the entire huge room to where Katie and Trent were sitting.

"Hello," she said, pulling out a chair. It was a useless greeting. Katie and Trent were too busy kissing to take notice. Sadie attacked her roast beef with the focus of somebody who wants desperately to ignore the people she's eating with.

It took Katie and Trent another thirty seconds to notice her arrival. "Hi," Katie said energetically.

"When did you get here?" Trent asked. Sadie chose to ignore the hint of dismay in his voice. When he had started dating Katie, Trent hadn't totally understood what dating half of the BFFFLs meant. When you dated Katie, you got Sadie as well. The same would apply, Sadie assumed, if she ever got a boyfriend.

"Just now," Sadie replied.

While Sadie had ignored Trent's dismay, Katie picked up on it. "Um, Sadie," she said awkwardly, considering what she should say. The truth was not an option. Saying that Trent had talked to her earlier about how he thought it was a little strange that the three of them were always together was possibly one of the worst options. "Are you, like, okay with hanging around us all the time? Do you think it's too awkward? You could totally leave if you want."

Sadie gritted her teeth, reminded herself that Katie was her BFFFL, and said something completely untrue. "I don't mind."

Trent's eyes widened and he nudged Katie with his knee. Images of Sadie stuck to them _forever _ran through his mind. He tried to use his Boyfriend Mindwaves to send her the message 'DEAR GOD GET HER AWAY FROM US! I'M LOSING MY SANITY!' Katie got the message, thought it was from his freaked out expression rather than the nonexistent Boyfriend Mindwaves.

"I want some time alone with Trent," Katie said slightly more aggressively.

Then, Sadie understood that they wanted her to leave. In her opinion, it wasn't a good thing. In the way that the Black Plague wasn't a good thing. "This, like, isn't going to be like what happened with Keith, right?" she asked nervously.

"Oh my gosh, why did you even bring that up?" Katie said angrily, crossing her arms across her chest.

"Because I don't want that to happen again," Sadie shot back.

"Whatever," Katie said, rolling her eyes. "You haven't even _had_ a boyfriend."

Both Sadie and Trent gasped. Sadie couldn't believe that Katie had said something that was so totally a low blow. "At least I'm not so desperate that I went on a date with my _cousin_!"

Now it was Katie's turn to gasp. "He was my _fourth_ cousin and I was twelve!" She glared at Sadie for a second before looking away pointedly. "We are _so_ not BFFFLs anymore."

"I wouldn't want to be BFFFLs with someone so mean anyway," Sadie yelled. She stomped away. The dramatic effect was semi-ruined because the room was so ridiculously huge. It took her almost a minute to stomp all the way across it. She shoved open the huge door and heard a loud crunching sound from behind it.

On the other side, she found Ezekiel crouched on the ground, holding his hands to his face. She had a quick debate with herself about whether or not she should switch from being mad to concerned. She decided on concerned after he didn't move from the ground.

"Are you okay?" she asked, crouching next to him.

"I'm fine, eh," he mumbled through his hands, even though he obviously wasn't.

"Let me see," she said. His hands slowly came off his nose, allowing her to see that his nose was bent in a direction entirely different from the one noses are supposed to point in. It was actually kind of gross, in her opinion. "Please put your hands back," she said uncomfortably, staring at the tile floor with a fascination it didn't deserve. "Hey, I think there's, like, a bathroom around the corner. We can look at it in there."

Sadie led Ezekiel by the elbow to the bathroom. In the fluorescent lighting of the bathroom, the broken nose looked even worse. "What do you think we should do?" she asked, feeling guilty about injuring him.

He touched his nose gingerly. "I knoo' what to doo," he said grimly. Sadie was about to ask him what it was that they should do when, all in one motion, he cracked his nose back into place.

Sadie flinched. "Ohmygosh," she breathed.

"Doo'es it look oo'kay?" he asked, turning away from the mirror to look at her.

She stepped back, still squeamish, but was startled to see it was back in place. "Actually, it totally does." She leaned in to check if it was really okay and bit her lip, a nervous habit Katie had previously reassured her was cute instead of weird and gross. "Sorry I broke your nose."

"T-that's oo'kay," he stammered. He took a small step backwards, realizing that a _girl_, something he hadn't had very many good experiences with, was standing very close to him. "Thanks!" he said abruptly, almost tripping over himself to get out of the bathroom. It was only after he was already halfway down the hallway that he realized he had just exited the women's bathroom, a place his father had warned him never to enter. His father had told him that _unspeakable_ things went on in there. He was in such a hurry to escape that he even forgot to swagger as he walked.

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Recommendation: **

Total Drama: Payback

After four rough seasons of Total Drama, Courtney, fed up with Chris's sick and borderline inhumane tactics, teams up with the producers to create Total Drama Payback, a season with a focus instead on finally getting revenge on Chris.

Sound good? It should. First of all, the summary has good punctuation and grammar. Secondly, the idea is actually executed well with crack pairings and a plot that will knock your socks off. What are you waiting for? CLICK ON THE LINK ALREADY!


	3. Part 2: Girl Talk

**Chapter 2: Girl Talk**

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Sadie woke up the next morning feeling like she was missing something important. Not something important like her favorite color of nail polish was, but more like she was missing an arm or a leg. She rolled out of bed, mentally shaking off the feeling, and got on with her morning routine.

She ran into a problem with her clothes. All the clothes in her wardrobe had been made by Katie. Usually, putting them on in the morning gave her a sense of pride. Now, it made her feel uncomfortable. She tore all her clothes out of the closet and scattered them over her bed, looking for something to wear that wasn't Katie contaminated. In the end, she settled for an itchy black dress her Granny had given her. The only reason it had gone in her suitcase in the first place was because she had mistaken it for the black turtleneck Katie had made during her knitting phase.

Before leaving the room, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Without thinking about it, she had put her hair up in pigtails like they always did. She found herself ripping the pink pompom elastics out of her hair violently. Even after her hair was down, it didn't look different enough from Katie's. Barrettes went in to hold back her bangs and she brushed her hair down until she thought she didn't look anything like Katie.

When she entered the dining room, the heads swiveled towards the door like they usually did. This time, however, they froze in place and several jaws dropped. Sadie tugged at the collar of the itchy dress and tried to walk confidently – or as confidently as you could walk with your knees wobbling like her Granny's custard- to the nearest table with people.

"Why does everyone, like, look so surprised?" she chattered, pasting the happiest smile she could muster on her face.

Leshawna was the first to recover. "Girl, you look so different."

"You know, I just needed a change," she replied.

"Did something happen?" Bridgette asked with the huge amount of concern people had come to expect from the compassionate surfer girl. "Where's Katie?"

Sadie upped the wattage of her smile to creepy clown levels. "I don't know."

That proclamation sent the two other girls sitting at the table into a shell-shocked silence. Sadie left briefly to snag some breakfast from the buffet and returned to find them whispering. They abruptly stopped talking and smiled toothily at her when she sat down again.

The door to the room was pushed open and the heads of the three girls at the silent table snapped to look at it especially quickly. Bridgette actually rubbed her neck afterward, having given herself whiplash. They turned back to their meals, disappointed, when they saw it was only Ezekiel.

"Are you sure nothing happened?" Bridgette asked again.

"I'm just not BFFFLs with Katie anymore," Sadie replied, stabbing her waffle with unnecessary force. "Actually, we're not even Fs anymore."

The door opened again and the three checked the doorway. It was Noah. They returned to the conversation.

"That is not nothing," Leshawna pointed out.

"Whatever, I totally don't care," Sadie said, sawing angrily at her waffle. "She is, like, so dead to me. I don't even want to talk about her anymore." She glanced down at her waffle and deemed it sufficiently cut enough to eat, as she had stopped cutting the waffle and started sawing the plate instead.

The huge door cracked open and the people they had unconsciously been watching for walked in. Katie gaped at Sadie's new sense of fashion before grabbing onto Trent's flirtily and giggling at high volume. Katie smirked meanly at her ex-BFFFL and led Trent to the farthest possible table from Sadie. Sadie flipped her hair behind her shoulder, flaunting her new hairstyle, and smirked back. Trent somehow managed to remain blissfully unaware of the silent battle of wills going on.

"Want to go swimming?" Sadie asked, practically yelling the question. The message she was trying to send was: _Haha!_ _I already have new friends. See? You and me are soooo over. I'm not even, like, sad about it. _

Katie got the message loud and clear. She leaned even closer to Trent, which hadn't seemed humanly possible until that moment.

Leshawna shrugged, not reading much into Sadie's sudden request. "Sure."

Bridgette wasn't so easily fooled. She stared at Katie and Trent before slowly nodding. "Okay."

"Meet you at the pool in ten minutes!" Sadie said, already almost out the door. She practically ran the entire first floor in her search for an elevator. She entered the elevator to the sound of a flute solo. The elevator was programmed to play only one song: Flight of the Bumblebee. So, if you were unlucky and got a room near the top of the hotel like Sadie had, you were forced to listen to reruns of the semi-irritating flute solo. The song gave her a kind of manic energy that she lost after sprinting away from the music, jumping into her room, and realizing she did not own a bathing suit that didn't match one of Katie's.

She curled up under the warm, inviting covers of her bed, hoping to gain some comfort after that unhappy realization. They were actually way too warm, so she kicked them off and clutched her pillow to her chest. Katie couldn't stay mad for too long, right? Well, yeah, their fight had totally hurt Sadie's feelings, but they were BFFFLs. That had to mean something, right? But Trent wasn't just going to go away, so even if Katie apologized nothing was going to be fixed.

Sadie puzzled over the problem until the warmth made her brain foggy. It was almost uncomfortably warm, even without covers. The Playa des Losers hotel was located on a remote island that had odd weather patterns. One day, it would be blisteringly hot and the next, there would be a blizzard. The weather never really bothered anybody particularly. If there was snow, the pool activities for the day would simply be taken to the heated indoor pool instead.

Sadie hugged her pillow extra-tight, wishing things would just fix themselves, and fell asleep slowly. Hopefully, things would be better when she woke up.

* * *

Sadie felt super-bad about ditching the pool when she woke up. She rolled out of bed and walked down the hallway, checking every door to see if it was Bridgette's. She only had a vague idea where Bridgette's room was and knocking on every door was a good enough solution. Besides, the only two people staying on this floor were her and Bridgette. Eventually Bridgette opened one of the doors Sadie knocked on and stared at Sadie with a bemused expression.

"Hey, I'm sooooo sorry about ditching the pool," Sadie said quickly. "I totally fell asleep in my room and, like, just woke up."

"That's fine," Bridgette replied. She scrutinized the girl in front of her. Was it just her, or did Sadie seem a bit _too_ energetic? The girl was always full of energy, but this seemed like a little much.

"Cool! If you're okay with it, I'm going to go and find Leshawna," Sadie said, flashing Bridgette a blinding smile. "Do you know what floor she's on?"

"Thirteenth."

"Okay! See you later." Sadie ran down the hallway, waving to the surfer girl standing in the doorway. Bridgette didn't even have time to tell her what room Leshawna was in, but she assumed Sadie would come back once she realized she hadn't asked.

Sadie spent a few seconds in the elevator, her foot tapping at a crazy pace that almost perfectly matched the tempo of Flight of the Bumblebee. Once she stepped onto the plush carpeting of the thirteenth floor, she did indeed realize that she didn't know what room Leshawna was in. Instead of taking the elevator back up to Bridgette, whose room number she didn't remember anyway, she applied the same logic she had used upstairs and knocked on every door she came to.

Her third knock made the fourth door open. A toque covered head was the first clue to Sadie that this was not who she wanted. "Yo, eh," Ezekiel said. "What's breaking?"

She giggled. "Sorry, wrong door," she said. "And also, you don't say breaking. You could say what's up, or what's poppin', or what's crackin', but nobody really says the last two. Bye!" She took a few more steps down the hallway and rapped on the next door.

Trent opened the door and Sadie stood gaping at him. "Hey, Katie, Sadie's here," he called behind him.

"No, I'm not," she contradicted, shaking her head violently.

Katie appeared in the doorway beside Trent and frowned at Sadie. "Do you, like, want to apologize?"

"No," Sadie said, her voice taking on the bratty tone of voice she always had when she was mad. "Shouldn't you apologize?"

Katie's eyes narrowed into slits. "You're the one knocking on my door."

Even thought it was a good point, Sadie steamrollered over that fact in her head. Until she apologized, everything in the world was Katie's fault. Knocking on the wrong door? Katie's fault. Their favorite lip gloss line being discontinued? Katie's fault. Global warming? Also Katie's fault. "Whatever," she said dismissively. "Bye."

"Bye!" Katie yelled after her, as if the word were an insult.

"Double bye!" Sadie shot back, stomping down the hallway. Neither girl quite registered how ridiculous the argument sounded.

Sadie took the stairs back up to her room, not in the mood for Flight of the Bumblebee. After charging up what seemed like an endless number of flights, she walked slowly to her room, completely winded. Standing in front of her door, she unlocked it quickly and collapsed on her bed. Today was definitely making the list of Top 10 Worst Days Ever.

She didn't leave her room very much for the next few days. The amazing discovery that the hotel offered room service helped a lot. (Strangely, she still never managed to catch a glimpse of any staff. A knock on the door announced the arrival of food but when she opened the door nobody was ever there.) The logic behind the extended amount of time she spent in her room was that as long as she waited it out, Katie would eventually come to apologize.

On the fourth day, she was already sick of being cooped up inside. Even going out on her balcony wasn't getting her spirits up. Then again, the weather had turned chilly, so being outside wasn't much better than being inside. She wandered over to her door, contemplating giving up her shut-in and finding somebody- _anybody_- to talk to. She had already pored over every magazine she owned, reread one of the Twilight books, and given herself manicures in eight different colors. Even worse, all those activities were things that were way more fun when she did them with Katie.

The carpet under her feet crinkled, which made her pause. To her knowledge, carpet didn't normally make sounds like that. On the ground was a slip of paper that had been slipped under the door. She picked it up and unfolded it carefully.

_Stop moping and cheer up_, it read.

Sadie smiled at the note and opened her door to leave the room. After walking halfway down the hallway, she decided to go swimming downstairs and went back into her room to change into a bathing suit. She made sure to pick the one that had been their least favorite- it was completely black and didn't even have a pattern. She slipped on flip-flops and padded down the hallway to the elevator. Flight of the Bumblebee started up again when the doors slid open, to her dismay, so she plugged her ears against the noise.

The elevator stopped on the tenth floor and the doors slid open to reveal Cody, wearing blue swimtrunks. "Hey, Sadie," he said, slipping into the Codemeister persona he'd created for himself. He did a finger bang in her direction. "You are looking good."

She unplugged her hears when she noticed his mouth was moving. "What?"

"I said that you looked extra-cute this morning," he said, unabashed.

She giggled, her energy returning. "Thanks!"

The elevator door started closing and Cody slipped into the elevator at the last second. Sadie jammed her fingers back into her ears, blocking out the sound of the irritating piano solo. He continued to try out pick-up lines on her, but her fingers blocked out the sound of his voice along with the elevator music. But Cody was nothing if not persistent, so he followed her out of the elevator and towards the indoor pool. "That bathing suit is totally hot," he said, flashing her a gap-toothed smile.

"Oh my gosh, thank you," Sadie gushed. "Ka-" She cut herself off and her face fell. She had been about to say that Katie had picked it out.

Cody mentally kicked himself and scanned their conversation for something he had done wrong. He came up with nothing, as all he had done was compliment her.

They reached the indoor pool in silence and separated. Sadie headed towards the hot tub, her flip-flops slapping noisily against the concrete. Leshawna and Bridgette were sitting comfortably in the hot tub. To Sadie's relief, there was no sign of Katie.

"I think we've worked through all-" Bridgette paused when she saw Sadie and waved. "Hey, Sadie!"

Leshawna turned her head and looked up at Sadie. "Hey girl! Where've you been?"

Sadie shrugged the question off and slipped into the warm water. She let out a sigh of contentment before dunking her head under the water. When she resurfaced, Leshawna and Bridgette had gone back to their original topic.

"Honey, it's great that you've patched everything up with Geoff," Leshawna said.

"Yeah, it feels good to see the old Geoff again," Bridgette said happily. "But what about you? Are you interested in anybody on the show?"

Leshawna chuckled and slouched a little deeper into the hot water. "You could say that," she said coyly.

"Who?" Sadie asked, butting into the conversation for the sake of information.

"Sorry, my lips are sealed," Leshawna replied breezily. "He's off-limits right now."

"He's dating somebody?" Bridgette asked.

"Yup."

Both Sadie and Bridgette mentally went through all the guys that were dating somebody on the show. There was Trent, Duncan, Owen, DJ, and Geoff. Trent was dating Katie of course, Geoff was with Bridgette, and Owen was still dating Izzy. DJ was supposedly dating somebody back home. Duncan's relationship with Courtney, however, still remained unclear. Sadie had never seen Courtney acknowledge that she was dating the delinquent. In fact, most of the time, suggestions that she was dating him were usually met by heartfelt denial on her part. In Sadie's opinion, after what happened during TDA, it was amazing that Duncan still put up with her.

"What about you? You got your eye on some man?" Leshawna asked Sadie.

Sadie sighed, the very mention of her dating reminding her of the fight with Katie. "Not particularly," she said, trying to be cheery. "I guess Justin is cute, but we…. _I_ got over him, like, a really long time ago. Besides, he hasn't been eliminated yet."

"I saw Cody walk in with you," Bridgette said, her lips curving into a mischievous smirk. "He's over Gwen, right?"

Sadie giggled at the mention of Cody. "He hits on anything that _moves_," she pointed out. "It's totally adorable and hilarious."

"I think…" Bridgette trailed off as Ezekiel walked past the hot tub. He paused, as if contemplating whether or not to join them, and then hurried on his way again.

"What's up with him?" Sadie asked, pointing a finger at the prairie boy.

Leshawna glanced at him and shook her head. "He's been like that since he got here," she explained. "The boy hasn't talked to anybody."

Sadie hopped out of the hot tub, struck by a surge of determination. "I'll talk to him," she said, already heading towards Ezekiel. If there was one thing she was good at, it was cheering people up! People always told her she was super sweet and nice. "Hi!" she chirped, sitting beside him on the edge of the pool.

He slammed the book he was reading closed and stared at her with an expression that could only be described as complete and utter astonishment. It was most likely because nobody on the show ever really talked to him willingly. Now that one had- and a girl at that- you could have knocked him over with a feather.

"How's your nose?" she continued, ignoring his amazement.

"It's fine, eh," he said quietly. He touched it absentmindedly, rubbing a small bump on the side.

"You sure?" she asked, leaning in closer to check for herself.

Nodding frantically, he scrambled to his feet. "Yup." He hugged his book to his chest and headed for the exit at a pace that made it pretty obvious he was running away. Sadie watched him go, confused about what had just happened.

"What's with him?"

Sadie jumped and turned to see Cody pulling himself out of the pool next to her. "I dunno," she replied. "But he was acting super weird."

Bridgette, Leshawna, and Sadie were once again chatting in the hot tub when Trent called Sadie's name. The girls looked for the source of the voice and saw Trent standing awkwardly in the steam. "Uh, can I talk to you?" he asked uncomfortably.

Sadie pulled herself out of the water, the thought that her fight with Katie could partially be Trent's fault never crossing her mind. "Yeah?"

"Um, privately," he said.

She nodded and he led her out of the pool area. On the way, she pulled a towel out of the towel rack and wrapped it around herself. "What's up?" she asked once they were away from everyone else.

"You've got to make up with Katie," he said forcefully. "She wouldn't admit it, but she's pretty torn up about your fight."

Sadie crossed her arms across her chest and looked away from Trent. "Unless she apologizes, I don't care." She was holding a grudge roughly the size of a semi-truck, so anything regarding Katie was going to make her suddenly become highly immature. It was surprising that she didn't plug her hears and begin singing.

"Please?" Trent begged.

"No way," she said stubbornly. She clutched her towel tighter around her body and glared at Trent before stomping away. Trent watched her go with the look of a man that had lost all hope. Maybe he did have a tendency towards the dramatic where girls were concerned, but this time the problem was _serious_. In his opinion, at least.

* * *

A/N: Go take the poll, people!


	4. Part 3: A Night At The Fights

**Chapter Three: A Night At The Fights**

* * *

It was chilly on the dock that night. Not just because of the freak hailstorm earlier that day or the cool wind blowing, but because of the frigid atmosphere between the people waiting for the next eliminated contestant. Even Leshawna felt oppressed by it and she was normally able to completely ignore bad atmospheres just by being her loud and proud self.

Nobody knew why, but Katie and Trent had apparently fought. At one end of the dock, Trent was sitting with his feet dangling off the edge, staring miserably off into the foggy distance. Katie had placed herself as far as possible away from him without actually stepping off the dock, which meant she was still only a few feet away from him. It was a small dock. And if glares could kill, the ones Katie was shooting at Trent would have been the equivalent of the atomic bomb.

Sadie positioned herself between Leshawna and Bridgette, blocking herself from both Trent and Katie. "Sadie, girl, what's going on with those two?" Leshawna whispered.

"I dunno. I'm not friends with Katie anymore," Sadie said, her inner bratty child coming out in her voice.

Leshawna was reminded of one of her little sisters- who was _five_- and resisted the urge to give Sadie a stern talking to. "I know that," she said patiently. "I just thought you might know."

"Well, I don't," Sadie muttered.

"Now, look here-" Leshawna began, ready to smack some sense into Sadie.

Bridgette noticed Leshawna's rising temper and nipped it quickly in the bud. "Leshawna!" she said sharply.

Leshawna took a deep, calming breath and let it out slowly. "Sorry. Look, the boat's here."

The Boat of Losers chugged to a stop at the dock and a familiar mohawked head came into view. He smirked, taking in the view of the Playa des Losers. "Hey guys," he said, grabbing his duffel bag.

"Duncan?" Leshawna said, her eyebrows rising. "Didn't expect you to be coming any time soon."

He laughed bitterly at a joke only he understood. "Courtney dumped me," he said tonelessly.

Several of the ex-contestants held back the word _finally_. Several more wondered why Duncan hadn't dumped her first. Seriously, the girl had kneed him in the groin so many times that people were wondering if Duncan could still have kids. And she was the one to dump _him_? Even after the girlfriend contract snafu? Yet Duncan continued "trippin" over Courtney, as Leshawna said, despite Courtney's bossiness, misplaced jealousy, and all the other things on her long list of bad qualities. Duncan had even ended up sharing some- make that _most_- of the money he won on TDA with her, on her orders of course. (Cue whipping sound effect.)

"And then she organized everybody to vote me off," he continued. He stared past everyone blankly, like they didn't really exist. It was freaking them all out.

"Oh no she did not!" Leshawna cried indignantly. "That girl has got a lotta nerve. I'm gonna kick her ass six ways to Sunday when she gets here."

"Yeah," Duncan said dully, stepping off the boat.

The group standing on the dock dispersed, heading back to the main hotel. Sadie, in the mood for a walk, peeled away from the main group and walked along the pearly white sand. The island was really beautiful. Too beautiful, actually. Nobody could believe that the same producers that had seemed so hell bent on cutting corners to make the contestants lives miserable had really gotten the ritzy island resort as a consolation for the losers.

However, none of the contestants knew- or ever would know- that the resort had actually gone belly-up as a result of the terrible location. (What morons chose an island with freak weather off the coast of Muskoka as the location for a tropical island resort?) The producers had snapped up the island for a dirt cheap price and had even gotten the bonus of being able to fool the contestants into thinking they would be competing on the gorgeous island. The ad had said that they would be staying at a wonderful hotel, but it had never exactly specified _when_. Technically, that wasn't a lie. And they had lawyers on standby, ready to prove it.

The island was a whole lot bigger than Sadie had thought. As she walked, the palm trees and other various tropical looking potted plants slowly disappeared from the path, giving way to more native greenery. Sadie plodded through the sand, stopping every so often to shake sand out of her flip-flops, until she reached a rocky cove. The sand turned into gravel and she was surprised to see a tiki hut suspended on stilts at the edge of the cove's small cliff.

She walked up the few steps leading up to the hut and found Ezekiel and Noah inside reading in the light of flickering tiki torches, sitting on wicker chairs at opposite ends of the hut. "Hi!" she said, breaking the silence.

Ezekiel flinched violently and slammed his book shut. "Y-yo, eh," he stuttered. Noah's reaction, or lack thereof, was much more normal. He flipped a page and pointedly ignored Sadie.

Being ignored only made Sadie curious about _why _she was being ignored. She trotted over to Noah's side of the hut and sat in the chair nearest him. "Whatcha doing?"

"Sadie, you talking to me makes it more difficult for me to ignore you," he said, not looking up from his page.

Sadie giggled, her automatic response to most mean things Noah said. "You're so funny."

Noah sighed. "Why don't you go bother Homeschool instead?"

Sadie paused and considered his suggestion. There were two options in the situation. She could attempt to carry a conversation with the extremely unwilling Noah or she could try to talk to the skittish Ezekiel. Also, unless you counted breaking Ezekiel's nose, she had barely interacted with him at all. So Ezekiel was obviously the more interesting choice, she concluded. She darted to the other side of the hut and flopped into the chair beside Ezekiel.

The homeschooled boy's eyes widened to an almost inhuman size. He stared at Sadie with the same expression found on small animals being hunted in the wild. "I'm not going to bite," she said, flashing him a carefree smile that made his eyes return to their normal size. "What's up?"

He bit his lip and looked up with the typical expression of somebody racking their brain for an elusive piece of information. "Um, nothing?" he said carefully.

"Hey, what's that?" Sadie asked, already reaching for the book sitting on his lap. Ezekiel moved to grab the book automatically but Sadie flipped it over before he could touch it. "The Dictionary of Slang," she read.

"I'm, uh, trying to learn teenspeak, eh," Ezekiel explained, staring at the book.

"Why?"

"The people oo'n this shoo' doon't like me, so I thought if I coo'uld talk to them they might like me moo're," he said.

"Like, we don't like you because of all those totally mean things you said on TDI," Sadie replied bluntly.

"Oh." He looked a bit crestfallen and started to fiddle absent-mindedly with the book.

But Sadie had more to say. "And then you, like, were being creepy in the hot tub with Bridgette," she continued. "And _then_ you pretended to be, like, a rapper or something. It was super annoying." She shrugged dismissively, finished ripping the shell-shocked homeschooled boy to pieces.

Ezekiel proceeded to stare at the ground unhappily, wishing it would suddenly drop out from beneath him and transport him elsewhere, while Sadie continued to smile pleasantly. Sadie's biggest fault by far was that she was sometimes brutally honest and truly believed that her honesty would always be well received. So while Ezekiel was silently wishing for the earth to absorb him, Sadie felt that her words would somehow help him to reform himself. Their conversation thus far might have been far from a stellar example of wit and wisdom, but it had definitely taken a turn for the worse after Sadie had shared her far too blunt observations.

The silence grew so thick that even Sadie couldn't ignore it anymore. She was about to giggle and offer up another comment on something or other- what she would say hadn't quite been thought out yet- when Noah cleared his throat loudly. It was quite recognizable as the 'No, I do not have an amphibian in my throat, I would just like the attention of the people in this room' kind of throat clearing. With her usual amount of boundless energy, Sadie bounced back over to his side of the hut.

Despite the fact that his own throat clearing had summoned her, Noah took his sweet time before speaking. Sadie shifted from side to side in front of him until he saw fit to close his book, hooking his thumb inside to mark his page. "Oh my god!" she squealed, checking out the cover. "I've totally read that book! Have you gotten to the part where Mr. Darcy-"

"Don't finish that sentence," Noah cut her off, shooting her a warning glare. She giggled sheepishly and ducked her head. "Anyway, give Zeke a break."

"From what?"

He stared at her incredulously, trying to figure out if she was actually being serious. After examining her clueless smile intently, he decided that she was definitely as clueless about what he was talking about as she looked. There was no way she was a good enough actress to fake that level of obliviousness. "The guy might be absolutely clueless about real life, but he has feelings, you know. If you point out every one of his bad points, he's going to be hurt." He rolled his eyes and opened his book, intending to resume reading now that he had imparted his wisdom upon Sadie.

Sadie let out an overdramatic gasp, something she was prone to do when shocked. "Like, did I hurt his feelings?"

Reluctantly, Noah closed his novel and returned to his conversation with Sadie. "Just look at him," he said, waving a hand in Ezekiel's direction. At that moment, the prairie boy was attempting to shrink into the chair and become unnoticeable. If the ground wasn't going to oblige and swallow him, the next best thing was to become as close to invisible as possible.

"Awww, he looks so sad," Sadie said sympathetically. She smiled reassuringly and called, "Hey, I, like, take it all back!"

Ezekiel's expression morphed from one of unhappiness to the look of confusion that was generally stuck on his face. Sadie, who was, in his opinion, someone much cooler and more adjusted to the "real world" than he was, had just given him a scathing review of everything he had done wrong since arriving on the show. Then, after he had tried desperately to digest what she had thrown at him, she had taken it all back abruptly. This was why he just wasn't cut out for the "real world." People were so darn _confusing_! Ezekiel had thought- no, _known_- that he was smart before Total Drama. But for some reason, all his logic and intelligence didn't work with people outside his family's small farm.

Before TDI, he had generally spent most of his time inside, reading through the heaps of textbooks his parents- who also doubled as his teachers and only real friends- had passed on to him. Textbooks were less confusing than people. Textbooks didn't change their minds without warning.

Noah could see the confusion written all over Ezekiel's face, and while Noah couldn't read minds, he was intelligent enough to guess at what was rolling around Ezekiel's head. The whole situation was enough to make him want to hit himself over the head repeatedly with his book. He refrained from doing so because pain, like sports and most things that required energy, wasn't really his thing.

"Hey, Noah," Sadie chirped, interrupting his pessimistic train of thought. "Are you, like, friends with Ezekiel?"

Noah's eyebrows rose and he stared at Sadie for several long seconds. Exactly where this line of thought had come from he couldn't fathom. He gave up trying to understand her momentarily and answered with a one word sentence that would hopefully get her to leave him in peace with Mr. Darcy and the Bennett family. "Sure."

She sat in the wicker chair beside him, which he took as a sign that she wasn't planning on leaving any time soon. He peeked out of the corner of his eye at her, not quite ready to close his book and devote full attention to her. Amazingly, she didn't say anything and was instead staring thoughtfully off into the distance. He decided that Sadie's silence was one of life's rare miracles and turned his eyes back to his book.

Unfortunately for Noah, what was going through Sadie's mind would have made him wish for her constant chatter instead. She had taken his one word response and run with it in a direction that he could never have predicted. "So do you like, _like _like him?" she asked, staring at him with a bright smile.

Noah blinked, sorted through the twisted jumble of words she had thrown at him, and came up with a translation he didn't like at all. "For the last time, I. Am. Not. Gay," he hissed. Shooting her the most venomous glare he had, he stood and stomped out of the tiki hut.

Sadie was slightly stunned by the amount of anger in his voice, but her natural immunity to most mean things Noah said allowed her to also brush this off in a few seconds. She ran after him, catching up to him about halfway down the beach. "Are you, like, mad?"

Noah continued stomping down the beach while Sadie attempted to keep up. Several sarcastic one-liners ran through his head, but he settled on, "Now what gave you that idea?"

"I'm so sorry!" Sadie said. She stumbled on a sand dune, almost hit the ground, and popped up again with an apologetic expression all in one movement. "It's just, like, you kissed Cody that one time." Noah's already stormy glare managed to get even angrier. Sadie continued on, not noticing that she was digging her own grave and jumping head-first into it. "And then you weren't that convincing when you said you weren't gay so we just thought you were in den-" She finally noticed Noah's death glare and realized stopping before it got to the point where he would never forgive her was the best course of action.

"In _denial_?" he spat out, as if saying the word was causing him actual physical pain.

"N-no!" she stuttered.

"Then what?"

She bit her lip and tried to think of _something_ that began with den. There had to be something! "Denver!" she finally said after a lengthy pause. "That's where… gay people hang out nowadays!"

He continued speedwalking towards the hotel, annoyed that he was forced to spend so much time with the girl who had accused him of being gay. Seriously, why was the island so freaking big? Toying with the idea of calling her out on the sheer ridiculousness of her attempt to not make the hole she was in any deeper, he sent her a deadly glare. She flinched slightly and tried to return his glare with an apologetic smile. "I'm so sorry!" she repeated.

Finally, Noah got the entrance to the main hotel in his sights. He picked up the pace just a bit and decided to take one last parting shot at Sadie before escaping inside. "Why should I forgive you?" he said. "It's not like you're all that forgiving yourself."

She stopped short, her eyes narrowing until they were tiny slits. "What does that mean?"

He waved his hand in the air dismissively and continued walking. "You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"No, I don't," Sadie said flatly, fixing a glare at his retreating back. "Hey, stop! I'm talking to you!"

"Well, I'm not interested in talking to you," he replied, not turning around. The automatic glass hotel doors slid open, sending a blast of air conditioning into the already cool night. He entered the hotel lobby thankfully.

She ran after him and grabbed at his elbow, stopping him. He directed a cool glare at her over his shoulder, which she returned with a steely gaze. "I'm _talking_ to you," she hissed. His eyes widened a fraction of an inch in surprise, amazed that she was capable of lacing her voice with such a large amount of venom.

He recovered from his surprise and shook her off. "You're the one who is in a ridiculous argument with Katie," he explained, rolling his eyes. He started on his way again, and this time she didn't bother to stop him.

"You're such a jerk!" she called after him.

It stung a bit, he'd admit that. But he locked the part of himself that felt just a little bit hurt deep within himself and smothered it with cynicism and smugness. "I know," he said, the words dripping with so much arrogance and mockery that Sadie wanted to throttle him on the spot. Instead, she stomped her foot childishly and stuck her tongue out at him. Then, she turned and headed for the closest stairwell because she sure wasn't going to take the elevator with him.

* * *

A/N: We're nearing the end of this arc. Make sure you vote in the poll!


	5. Part 4: You Can Only Go Up From Here

**Chapter Four: You Can Only Go Up From Here**

* * *

The next morning, the ex-contestants discovered that Duncan had made quite a splash at the Playa overnight. Quite literally too. He'd managed to flood the entire lobby, creating an odd sort of swimming pool. After discovering that the elevators no longer worked, Sadie wandered down the stairs and encountered the newly created pool. She joined the throng of people gaping at the water from the bottom steps of the stairs.

"How'd he do that?" she asked incredulously, staring at the delinquent that was currently smirking and waving from where he was floating atop a waterlogged sofa. It was already a given that Duncan was the cause of the miniature flood. During his previous visits to the Playa des Losers, he had routinely played pranks and caused general mayhem. However, back then most of his attention was usually focused solely on winning over Courtney instead of pranking. Now that Courtney was out of the picture, things were looking a bit more worrisome for the inhabitants of the Playa.

"Girl, who knows," Leshawna said, shaking her head.

"I don't know about you guys, but I'm not planning on standing here all day," Noah said, wading into the water. "You coming, Homeschool?" Ezekiel nodded quickly and took off his jacket before following the bookworm into the water. Several others followed into the water, including Bridgette, Cody, and Trent.

Leshawna also shook off her surprise and quickly pulled off her clothes, revealing her bathing suit underneath. "Duncan, when I get my hands on you, you're going to be in for a world o' hurt!" she hollered, marching into the water. She grabbed her forearm as if she was going to roll up her nonexistent sleeves, something she often did when she was angry.

Duncan's eyes widened to the size of saucers and he began to awkwardly paddle his floating sofa towards the closest exit, which happened to be the sliding glass doors that led outside. When he reached them, he realized that he had jammed them shut with massive amounts of tape earlier in order to stop the water from escaping. However, Duncan wasn't one to be deterred by situations that would have been considered impossible to escape by others. Faced with the wrath of Leshawna, he threw himself into the door and- in an incredible display of the acrobatics that allowed him to escape juvie multiple times- he somersaulted in the air, landing on his feet.

Of course, this released the several tons of water he had trapped inside the lobby. All the people swimming across the lobby were sucked into the sudden current and pulled outside. Sadie, who had been slightly apprehensive about swimming across the lobby, burst out laughing. The situation was completely ridiculous. She sort of wished she had pictures of everyone's faces as they were sucked outside.

She heard somebody laughing alongside her and when she looked she was surprised to find it was Katie. Katie was staring at her with an equally surprised expression. For the first time ever, Sadie found herself completely unsure of what to say around Katie. Katie seemed equally hesitant to say anything. A few long, awkward moments went by until Noah staggered back inside, pushing his hair out of his eyes frustratedly. "If you two would stop staring at each other and help get some of this stuff out of the way, that would be great," he said testily, gesturing at the few pieces of furniture that had settled in front of the door to the hallway.

Katie offered a half-hearted apology and rushed to help him while Sadie sent him an angry glare, which he returned. "Find a different way through," she said rudely, turning around to do just that.

"Well, aren't you a ray of sunshine," Noah said sarcastically, heading for the blocked off door.

Sadie ran up the stairs and, after quite a bit of wandering, discovered another way to get through to the bottom floor of the hotel. She finally encountered one of the conveniently placed maps of the hotel and found her way to the dining room. In the dining hall, most of the other ex-contestants were sitting around with varying degrees of dampness.

Noah, Ezekiel, and Cody were at one table. Cody was chattering excitedly, while Noah looked like he wished he was anywhere but there and Ezekiel just looked confused. Trent was sitting with Bridgette and Katie was nowhere to be seen, so Sadie grabbed some food and sat there.

"Hey, Sadie," Bridgette said cheerfully.

"Yeah, hi," Trent sighed, barely lifting his head to look at her. He looked like someone had kicked his dog, stole his money, and made him watch the end of Titanic until his tear ducts were no longer functioning. Depressed didn't completely cover it.

"You okay?" Sadie asked Trent, wondering if the world had ended and she hadn't noticed.

"Katie dumped me," he moaned.

"Oh," Sadie said faintly, not knowing exactly what reaction she should have to this particular piece of news. Yes, she was mad at Katie, but she didn't think that extended over to Trent. But she definitely didn't know if she was really up for comforting Trent or even really acknowledging Katie's existence in general. She settled for a quiet, "Sorry."

This time, Trent lifted his head a fraction of an inch higher and sent a baleful glance in her direction. The baleful expression quickly turned to one of realization as he observed the chubby girl eating waffles beside him. "Sadie," he murmured, "You should make up with Katie." He said it with finality, like it was the only option left.

Sadie broke into a coughing fit that was mostly induced by shock and partially induced by choking on her waffles. When she had recovered, she looked at him with slightly watery eyes and shook her head. "Not unless she apologizes."

Trent stared at her, his mouth slightly open and his green eyes childishly wide. The fight had been going on too long. It had been a few days already, the longest one of Katie and Sadie's fights had ever lasted. Dealing with Katie during those first few days had been difficult. She'd flipped between snapping at him and being overly sweet too quickly for him to form a solid reaction to either. When he'd suggested she make up with Sadie, she snapped and told him that if he liked Sadie so much, he should go out with_ her_. At this point, he didn't even know if there was hope for Sadie and Katie's relationship and consequently there might not be hope for his relationship with Katie.

All of this was contributing to make Trent absolutely inconsolable.

On the other side of the table, Bridgette was making up for the doom and gloom emanating from Trent by smiling sunnily at Sadie. She pushed a strand of her soaked ponytail off her shoulder and rested her elbows on the table. "That was a huge flood this morning," she said conversationally.

Sadie laughed shortly, sounding rather forced, and tried to move on from the thought of Trent and Katie. "Yeah, how did Duncan do it?"

"I asked and he said that troublemakers shouldn't reveal their tricks," she said with a good-natured roll of her eyes. "I'm pretty sure that saying is about magicians, but whatever. I saw the ceiling near one of the fire sprinklers leaking, so I guessed that was how he did it."

"I was sure-"

"Would you leave me alone and go talk to her if she '_so_ wants you,' _Codemeister_?" Noah practically shouted, making the nickname Cody had given himself seem like a sort of expletive.

The heads of everybody in the room flipped around to see Noah stomping towards the door, a mixture of carefully constructed boredom and trace amounts of irritation on his face. It was surprising. Noah was highly sarcastic, even to the point of meanness sometimes, but he was almost never downright angry. He was more likely to throw out a barbed comment than yell at someone. Sadie made sure to glare at him as he stomped away. He shot her an icy stare back.

Bridgette noticed the exchange and became even more worried for her friends than she already was. Things just seemed to be falling apart these days, for everybody but her. Leshawna liked someone who was already taken, Duncan had come to the Playa with news of his breakup, Sadie and Katie were fighting, and Trent and Katie had broken up. Now, Noah was acting unusual and kept exchanging glares with Sadie.

She took a calming zen breath and tried to calm the waves of worry that were overtaking her. Worrying was useless. When she could do something to help any of those people, she would. "These waffles are good," she said lightly, bringing Sadie's attention back to the tasty, sugary breakfast at hand.

Sadie nodded, her energy level sinking even lower than before. Then, the door Noah had just exited through flew open with a remarkable amount of force, announcing the arrival of Leshawna and Duncan. Leshawna was doing something none of them had ever seen in real life- dragging someone by the ear. The delinquent was definitely not enjoying the experience. He shot Leshawna mutinous glances while keeping up a continuous stream of under-his-breath cursing.

She released him and he immediately scooted away from her, rubbing his ear. "Duncan has something he wants to say," she announced.

Duncan muttered something that sounded sort of like "No, I don't."

"Did you say something?" she asked fiercely.

"Nope," he replied, not looking her in the eye.

"So?"

"I'm..." He paused and pulled a face before continuing. "Sorry. Happy?"

"For now," she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

"Great," he said with a roll of his eyes, and he turned to walk in the direction of the buffet.

Sadie focused on her meal again once it was clear that the announcement was finish. Leshawna joined them at the table, a victorious smile on her face.

"Hi."

Sadie looked in the direction of the voice and saw Cody sitting beside her, looking distinctly nervous. He gave her a strange half-smirk, an expression that didn't work on his boyish face. "Hi," she replied. "What's up?"

"Um." He blinked rapidly and stared at a point somewhere beyond her left shoulder. "Wouldyouliketogooutwithme?"

Sadie talked pretty quickly herself and it even took her a moment to decipher the outpouring of words that left Cody's mouth. "Really?" she asked, slightly thrown off balance by the question.

Cody somehow managed to look even more nervous and threw up his Codemeister persona. "Really, gorgeous."

She giggled and nodded. "Sure."

This time it was his turn to be shocked. "Really?"

"Yeah," she said casually.

"Thanks!" he said, a delighted smile appearing on his face. He nearly tripped over his own feet in his hurry away from the table. He rushed through the door and everyone heard a distinctive "YES!" from the hallway.

Sadie smiled fondly at the door and turned back to her waffles.

* * *

A/N: Aaaaaaaaand CUT! That's the end of this Act. Sadie's got a boyfriend! EEEEEEE! I'm excited to have more of Cody in this story. I'm also happy to write more Duncan. It's fun imagining him post-Courtney. Anyway, if you could all review and take the poll on my profile, that would make my day! (I have cybercookies to give to everybody that reviews!) Thanks for reading everybody!


	6. Act II: Bicycle

**Act II: Bicycle**

**Prologue: The Unmentionable**

_

* * *

Sadie was sitting in Jamba Juice, alone again. It seemed to be happening more and more often- being alone, that is. She sipped a Mango Twist and continued staring at the clock with a forlorn expression. _

_Katie was on a date with Keith, her on and off boyfriend since the seventh grade. She had promised to drive her home and was now approximately twenty-six minutes and nineteen seconds late. But Katie had promised to be there and Sadie had already missed the bus home, so she was planning on waiting. Besides, Keith was cute and Katie was happy with him. That was the only reason Sadie wasn't mad that Katie had been ditching her more and more often recently._

_A loud sucking noise announced the end of her Mango Twist. She contemplated ordering another, but realized that she wouldn't have enough for bus fare if she bought another. She spent a few minutes pondering the dilemma before deciding she would buy another and trust that Katie would come. She stood, ordered her drink at the counter, and was waiting for the man to finish blending it when Katie burst through the door. _

"_He is such a jerk!" she announced, storming towards her friend. She was breathing hard, as if she had run all the way from the movie theatre at the other end of the plaza to the Jamba Juice. In reality all she had done was stomp angrily the entire way, but she was mad enough to spit flames and being so angry was tiring. Everyone in the store stared at her for a moment and suddenly became entranced with their drinks or the people they were eating with. _

"_What did he do?" Sadie asked, biting back the words 'this time.'_

_Katie made a disgusted noise and rolled her eyes up towards the heavens. "I, like, don't even want to talk about it."_

"_One Mango Twist?" an employee asked, offering the drink to Sadie. Katie snatched it and began drinking resolutely. He blinked and decided not to protest after glimpsing the anger flashing in her brown eyes. _

"_Ohhh," Sadie cooed sadly, partially because she felt bad for her BFFFL and partially because she had really wanted that slushie. "Do you want to go home?"_

"_No," Katie muttered to the slushie. Sadie breathed a small sigh of relief. Katie wasn't the best driver under normal circumstances and Sadie definitely didn't want her driving when she was mad, especially in light of the recent Snack Shack debacle. "Let's go shopping," Katie said imperiously, already marching towards the door. Sadie followed, glad that Katie had chosen an activity that would probably be relatively low in its level of destruction. (The destruction of her bank account's savings didn't technically count.)_

_The Jamba Juice was conveniently located at the center of a huge shopping plaza, complete with several clothing chains and boutiques. Both Katie and Sadie turned to the left towards their favorite store, Vintage Ball, out of force of habit. They always started shopping sprees at Vintage Ball. The store was practically made for them. It sold clothes in styles primarily from the seventies and even had a little disco ball glittering in the window. _

_Margo, the owner, looked up after hearing the sound of the little bell on the door jingling. She was a plump woman with a sense of style that had gotten stuck in the seventies. Katie and Sadie swore that her ability to walk in platforms was inhuman. "Hello, girls," she said cheerfully, waving a pudgy hand bedecked with a multitude of rings at them._

"_Hi, Margo," they chorused. _

_Margo stared at them intensely and then snapped her fingers loudly. "Sadie!" she called, hurrying from behind the counter. "I've got a new dress in your size."_

"_Cool!" Sadie cheered, clapping her hands in excitement. _

_Margo disappeared into her back room, leaving the two girls to wait for the dress. _

"_I can't believe he'd say something so douchey," Katie said suddenly._

"_Who?" Sadie asked distractedly, staring intensely at the curtain Margo had disappeared behind._

_Katie rolled her eyes. "Keith, dummy."_

"_Oh yeah," Sadie said sheepishly, returning her focus to her friend. "Sorry."_

"_Well, now I don't have to, like, spend any more time with him," Katie said triumphantly._

"_Yeah, now you can spend time with me," Sadie agreed enthusiastically._

_Katie smiled at her friend, noticing how Sadie's eyes seemed to be glowing with happiness. Had it really been that long since the last time they had hung out? No, she'd spent the night at Sadie's house yesterday. But now that she thought about it, they'd been talking about Keith. Or rather, Katie had gushed about their latest date and Sadie had nodded supportively. Actually, all of their recent chats had been about Keith. Thinking back, Sadie had definitely been supportive but she hadn't exactly been excited. Definitely not as excited as Katie was. _

_Why hadn't she noticed this before? Katie was normally the more sensitive out of the two girls. She blindly grabbed at a rack of clothes, not wanting to meet Sadie's gaze anymore. "Hey, let's never mention Keith again, okay?" she said tersely. "Guess I kinda forgot about you recently, huh?"_

_Sadie thought back to the week before when Katie had forgotten to meet her at the beach. She too became suddenly interested in the clothes. "Maybe a little." _

"_I found it!" Margo sang, bursting through the curtain. "I accidentally put it at the bottom of my sorting pile!" _

_Sadie and Katie turned towards her with identical smiles of relief._


	7. Part 1: The Honeymoon Stage

**Chapter Five: The Honeymoon Stage**

* * *

"-and then he fell off his chair because he was so surprised!" Cody finished, flailing his arms wildly in a silly-looking miming of his story.

Sadie giggled and leaned her elbow on the edge of the drink bar. "That's hilarious!" she said excitedly. "I, like, had the same thing happen to me in Spanish class."

"I can't really imagine that," Cody said, cocking his head to the side. "You seem too graceful for that."

"No, I'm totally clumsy," Sadie replied, waving the compliment off. "I've, like, managed to trip _up_ stairs before."

"So have I!" Cody said, his eyes lighting up. There was a slight pause in the conversation where Cody realized that what he had just admitted wasn't exactly the coolest thing he could have shared about himself. (It definitely wasn't the dorkiest either.) He mentally cursed his loose tongue- the conversation had been going so well, too- and worked up the courage to sneak a peek at Sadie's expression. Amazingly, when he finally did look at his new girlfriend, he found that she was smiling delightedly at him.

"You're so cute," she said fondly.

He deflated a bit at that comment. "Cute?" he echoed.

"But super manly!" she corrected quickly, trying to assuage his slightly wounded male pride.

He puffed up and flashed her a lopsided smirk. Maybe the compliment hadn't come in exactly the way he'd imagined it previously, but seriously, when was a car chase that culminated in him leaping off a moving truck to save his lovely girlfriend from an untimely demise going to take place? To hell with it, he was going to take the compliment and bask in its satisfying glow.

"I'm kind of hungry," she said off-handedly, swiveling the stool around.

"Let me get you something!" Cody popped up from his stool so fast that he smashed his knee into the bar's edge. His feet hit the water with a splash that soaked him up to the waist.

"Are you oka-" Sadie began.

"It's fine, I'm fine," Cody cut her off, limping towards the buffet. "What do you want?"

"Could you get me some of whatever they're barbequing?"

He waved a thumbs up in her direction and ran into Noah while he was still looking at Sadie. "Watch where you're going, loverboy," Noah said.

"Heh, heh, sorry," Cody said quickly, backing away from the bookworm and turning to go around him.

Sadie sucked up the last of her virgin Mai Tai and plucked the umbrella out of the pineapple stuck on the rim. Cody was _such _a good boyfriend. He listened to her talk, was totally polite, and thought she was the most wonderful person in existence. It was a win, win, win situation as far as Sadie could see. The past two days had been a completely wonderful experience. She spun the tiny paper umbrella between her index finger and thumb and smiled, satisfied.

The sense of satisfaction that was giving her such a warm fuzzy feeling evaporated and was replaced with a mild sense of irritation when Noah took the seat Cody had recently vacated. Silence rose up between them as both Noah and Sadie tried to think of what exactly had possessed Noah to approach her. Both their thoughts skittered in inescapable circles, unable to get past their confusion.

"I heard you're going out with Cody," he said finally, reaching across the bar to grab an empty glass.

"Who told you that?" she said testily, trying to recall exactly why she was angry with him and failing.

The look he gave her would have withered flowers at twenty feet. "Cody."

"Oh," she breathed out faintly and felt embarrassment twisting in her stomach.

"Anyway, be nice to him. The guy's never had a girlfriend and we don't want you destroying the self-esteem of any more people." His mouth quirked up into an odd smirk and she winced, remembering the incident with Ezekiel. "And he thinks you're pretty much the salt of the earth."

"Salt of the earth?" she repeated, a question in her voice.

"Look it up," he said, slipping off the stool into the water with a small splash.

"Okay," Sadie replied, feeling like she should be upset. But she was unable to summon up the necessary anger, so she nodded instead. "I will."

He nodded curtly and walked away without a backwards glance, passing Cody, who was carrying two plates with burgers. Cody gave him a curious look before sliding one of the plates onto the bar with a flourish that almost sent the burger into the water. "Thanks," she said gratefully, picking up the burger with both hands.

"What were you guys talking about?" Cody asked, feeling that his new boyfriend status – _oh yeah, he was the man_ - allowed him to ask invasive questions. The question had the underlying message of "I thought you were currently holding a massive grudge against him, so why are you giving him the time of day?"

"Nothing much," she said, placing the burger back on the plate and picking up the small drink umbrella. She spun it quickly enough that the pattern turned into a blur of yellow and red streaks, wondering why she suddenly felt out-of-sorts. "He said…." She paused, tried to think of how to phrase what she wanted to say, and gave up. "Never mind."

Cody shrugged and took an enthusiastic bite of his burger. "The boat is coming tonight," he said casually.

"Any idea who's getting voted off?" she asked.

"Heather," he said without a beat of hesitation. "Or Courtney, hopefully," he added. "I have no idea what she did to Duncan to get him voted off, but she was ready to kill him when I was still in the competition. The only reason she didn't get him kicked off then was because their team didn't lose."

"I thought you liked Courtney."

He laughed a little nervously and leaned both elbows on the counter. "No, I'm kinda scared of her."

Sadie agreed whole-heartedly with that sentiment. She'd rather face down a raging bull than an angry Courtney. "She is kinda scary," was all she said. Both of them took a few more bites of their burgers in silence.

"You guys are the most boring couple I have ever seen! I was expecting alligators and fireflies spelling your names and bombs that go BA-BOOM but all I got is you two being _laaaaame_."

Both Cody and Sadie's heads flipped back and forth wildly, trying to find the source of Izzy's voice.

"Up here, sillies!"

Of course, being the silly, semi-rational people that they were, they had not deigned to look up. They both gaped at Izzy, who was perched on the drink bar's roof. The situation brought two questions to mind, both almost impossible to answer. First, and most obviously, how had she gotten up there? Second, how did she manage to place her full weight on the roof of the drink bar without breaking the flimsy thatching that held it together? Cody grappled with the answerless questions while Sadie got right down to the business of interrogating the redhead.

"When'd you get here, Izzy?" she asked.

"Oh, a couple of hours ago," Izzy replied nonchalantly, peeking over the edge of the roof. "Chris got tired of me blowing stuff up and kicked me out early. I think he knew that I was planning on setting his hair gel on fire. Or maybe he saw my secret stash of bobby pins. Either one."

Sadie didn't even bother to puzzle over the last part of her explanation, as her policy with Izzy was to try to ignore anything that registered over a five on the weirdness scale. Generally, it was a good policy. It saved Sadie the sprained brains that other people got from actually thinking about Izzy's chatter. "Is he going to eliminate someone else this week?" Sadie asked, secretly hoping that neither Courtney nor Heather would be descending upon the Playa to cause mayhem any time soon.

"I dunno. Chris' brain works like a baboon on drugs. He's crazy." She sang the last word and flipped off the tiki bar, landing in the water with a splash that drenched both Cody and Sadie. After letting out a cackle, she raced off in the direction of the main hotel building.

"I swear, she acts like that on purpose," Cody said, watching her go.

Sadie nodded, completely in agreement with her boyfriend, and bit into her burger.

* * *

The remainder of the afternoon passed in a blur of contentment for Sadie. She saw neither hair nor hide of Katie at the pool all day, which was almost a large a factor in her uninterrupted happiness as Cody's presence. Because she was pretty sure her pasty skin was about to jump headfirst into lobsterland, she suggested they go inside for dinner a bit earlier than usual. Cody, who got a sunburn just from the _mention _of the word sun, cast a look at the last remaining rays of sunshine and nodded vigorously. They quickly headed inside and made their way towards the dining room.

"Why is this place so huge?" Sadie wondered aloud as they turned down the hallway leading to the dining room.

"I dunno," Cody said. "I guess they ju-aaAAAH!"

Sadie stopped in her tracks, dumbfounded, as Cody's feet slipped out from underneath him. He hit the hard tile floor with a thump that made Sadie's back ache with sympathy. "I'm okay," he called from the floor, attempting to get up. The floor, however, was simply not cooperating. His sneakers slid away from him, sending him back onto the floor.

"Are you okay?" Sadie asked, stepping forward to help him. She shrieked as her feet moved in two separate directions and she ended up staring at the ceiling.

The unwelcome sound of hysterical laughter resounded throughout the hallway. Sadie pushed herself up on her hands, which slid around on the overly shiny surface of the tile, and saw Duncan standing in the open doorway to the dining room. "Ohhhh, man," Duncan got out through his laughter. "You should have seen your faces!" He smirked at them from where he stood inside the dining room. "He was all like, AHHH!" Duncan threw his arms out and did a reasonably good impression of Cody falling, minus the actual falling. "And you were all like, EEEE!" He leapt forward in a movement that resembled a leaping dolphin more than Sadie, and then broke down into laughter again.

"Dude, not cool," Cody said from where he laid on the ground. "I think I broke my spleen."

Duncan's only response was to laugh harder and slap a hand to his forehead.

Over the course of the next ten minutes, Sadie and Cody managed to get back to their feet several times, only to lose their footing on the slippery floor each time. Duncan, who eventually stopped laughing, began offering suggestions on how to get over to the dining room that were slightly patronizing and entirely irritating.

"Maybe if you pushed yourself up with only one hand?" he called.

Sadie, who had already tried that, fixed him with an angry glare. "What is this stuff?" she asked, gingerly getting on her hands and knees.

"Butter," Duncan replied smugly.

"Man, you are an evil _genius_," Cody said admiringly. About five minutes previous, his back had stopped hurting and he had regained his sense of humor.

Sadie stood slowly and didn't move, gaining her balance.

"Why don't you skate over here?" Duncan suggested. "I'm sure it's slippery enough."

Nodding, Sadie pushed off with her right foot. Her plastic flip-flop, which was amazingly still attached to her foot, moved smoothly across the buttered floor. Surprisingly, the idea actually _worked_, unlike the rest of Duncan's so-called "advice"_. _That should have been her first clue that something was up. The second should have been the maniacal grin on Duncan's face.

She gracefully skated down the remainder of the hallway, gaining speed as she went. And then she hit the Saran Wrap strung across the doorway. Duncan began to laugh again as she went down.

"Owwww," she moaned on the ground.

On his hands and knees about ten feet away, Cody gaped at her. He half-crawled and half-scrambled across the rest of the hallway. "You okay?" he asked, peering into his girlfriend's face.

She giggled and popped up to kiss him on the cheek. "I'm fine."

* * *

A/N: I'm alive, and I think I'll be updating this story regularly again. Woohoo, a new arc! I hope you're all having as much fun as I am. Questions for my reviewers:

1) What do you think of Sadie and Cody as a couple?

2) Any requests for pairings/pranks/plot devices? (I'm not saying I'm going to include them, but I'd like to hear them nonetheless.)

3) How realistic is the last scene?


	8. Part 2: Glued Together At the Seams

**Chapter Six: Glued Together at the Seams**

* * *

"Incoming!"

The four people sitting around the table turned as one, not wanting to miss the scene that was going to play out in the hallway.

"Whoop!"

"Leshawna, are you ok-aaAAH!"

Another thud followed the first one as Bridgette hit the ground. Applause and laughter erupted from those safely inside the dining hall.

Leshawna propped herself up on her forearms and scanned the occupants of the dining hall. Within seconds, her expression morphed into what Sadie thought a bull might look like if you locked it in an ice rink and waved red flags in its face. "DUNCAN!" she hollered.

Abruptly, Duncan stopped laughing. Sadie couldn't figure out what the expression on his face was. It looked foreign on the delinquent, as if his face wasn't used to presenting itself in that manner. As Sadie stared, she realized it actually looked a whole lot like guilt.

Duncan rearranged his face into an uncaring half-smirk and pushed the heels of his hi-top sneakers against the floor, propelling his chair away from the table with a jarring noise. "I'm outtie," he said. "It's been fun."

Trent, momentarily cheered up by his buddy's antics, raised his eyebrows knowingly. "Not going to stick around to talk to Leshawna?"

"As much as I would like to," Duncan said, already loping out of the room. "I'll pass. Later."

Moments later, Leshawna made it into the dining hall. She stood in the doorway, panting slightly. Grease stains marked her shirt and on her arms, butter shone in the fluorescent lighting. "Where is he?"

Those three words stuck such fear in the others that they instantly sold out Duncan and jabbed fingers in the direction he had disappeared to. Leshawna jogged in the direction of their pointed fingers, sharply focused on the task of hunting down and possibly murdering Duncan.

"He's doomed," Cody said, voicing the thought passing through everyone's heads.

Now that Duncan was no longer present, Sadie felt the need to help Bridgette. Somehow, the fact that one of her friends was floundering through a butter-covered hallway hadn't particularly bothered her until that moment. Duncan's very presence was a bad influence. When you spent time with him, you were somehow pulled along as he blatantly thumbed his nose at the rules of everyone and everything. Only Leshawna proved able to resist his particular brand of magnetism.

She crossed the small space between their table and the propped open double doors. Once she stood at the edge of the buttered, she only had time to have a vague impulse to run before Izzy barreled into her head-first.

As Izzy rambled through an apology and a long-winded explanation of why skating head-first was infinitely superior to regular skating, Sadie lay flat on the tiled floor, only able to focus on gulping in air. From her position on the ground, she traced the swirling gold patterns on the ceiling with her eyes. The patterns were somehow calming. Her back ached with the memory of the injury that had just been dealt to it.

Cody's fluffy-haired head appeared in her line of vision. "Are you okay, Sadie?"

She noted the concern he emanated and used all her effort to rocket into sitting position. Her smile was only a few levels short of its usual effervescence. "I'm, like, fine," she said, feeling a bit dizzy from sitting up so quickly. "Help me up?"

"Let E-Scope!" Izzy said, grabbing Sadie's hands. Izzy used altogether too much force to yank Sadie to her feet, leaving Sadie with a distinct feeling that Izzy was out to get her.

There was a loud banging noise, followed by the pounding of sneakers against the floor. Sadie looked quickly enough to see Duncan appear from behind a cluster of large potted plants. He made a mad dash across the room, running with a desperateness that led him to take flying leaps over chairs that happened to be in his path. Another loud bang sent him scooting under a table.

This time, Leshawna's figure could be seen standing in the doorway behind the potted plants.

Duncan's spiky green head poked out slightly from the white tablecloth. He retracted it quickly once he saw Leshawna stomping into the room.

"Where?" she said simply, her glare like a knife.

Faced with that glare, Sadie wanted to cower under the table with Duncan. She mustered her courage and pointed in a direction opposite to the table Duncan currently hid under. Unfortunately, this was not the direction Cody or Trent pointed. She corrected herself and pointed towards the main doors. Thankfully, Leshawna didn't seem to notice and turned around to go back the way she came, likely with some plan to head Duncan off instead of passing through the greased corridor again.

In a case of extremely bad timing, Duncan stuck his head out again as Leshawna passed his table. The tip of his Mohawk very nearly brushed her legs. He disappeared under the table again just in the nick of time. Leshawna only glanced downwards in time to see the tablecloth swaying slightly.

Leshawna had just begun to lean down to investigate when Izzy let loose a cackle and leapt onto the closest chair. From there, she hopped onto the table and set across the room, only stepping on the tables. Once she reached Duncan's hiding spot, she began jumping up and down, laughing maniacally all the while.

Though Leshawna's concentration on finding Duncan and straightening him out rivaled that of a chess grandmaster, Izzy's antics completely distracted her. She breathed in deeply, tilting her head in confusion. Then, she thought better of attempting to comment on what had just occurred and returned the way she came.

Besides the thudding of Izzy jumping up and down on the table, the room was as silent as a school hallway during summer holidays. Duncan emerged slowly once he ascertained that the coast was clear.

"Not a word," he said threateningly. He individually glared at each person in the room. An especially furious glare was reserved for Izzy. "What the hell?" he snapped. "What are you doing?"

"Izzy just saved your scared little butt," Izzy pointed out. "So yelling is so not nice."

"My butt didn't need saving," he said. "And I wasn't scared."

"Mr. Table might have a different story." She hunched and began stroking the surface of the table. "Don't you Mr. Table?"

"There's no point in even talking to you! You're insane!"

Sadie recoiled, shocked by the fury in Duncan's shouting. Cody grabbed her hand and squeezed it comfortingly.

"Hush, Mr. Table, don't you cry. Izzy's going to sing you a lullaby," Izzy crooned. She continued petting the table. Duncan seethed, punching a fist into his palm. "Don't be afraid of poor old Duncan. He's just sad because Courtney dumped him."

Sadie stifled a gasp and tightened her grip on Cody's hand.

Duncan's response to this jab was delayed. Almost incapacitated by anger, he stood motionless. Everyone in the room broke out into a cold sweat, waiting for his reaction.

They didn't need to wait long. He shoved at the bottom of the table Izzy stood on, knocking it onto its side with a great clatter. Izzy threw herself to the ground. She caught herself with her elbows, narrowly avoiding performing a faceplant.

Even Duncan seemed shocked by what he'd just done. He stood with his hands still extended from pushing the table, looking from the fallen table and Izzy to his hands. Table. Izzy. Hands. Table. Izzy. Hands. His expression shifted from shock to bewilderment. Then, it settled into blankness. He dropped his hands to his sides and walked away, leaving the room the same way he had entered it.

* * *

"Has anyone seen Duncan?" Sadie said. She looked around the lobby as if she expected Duncan to pop out from behind one of the couches.

Cody wasn't the person to ask about Duncan's whereabouts, considering that he hadn't been more than ten feet away from Sadie all night. There was no possibility of him knowing anything she didn't know. Sadie's question was posed less because she expected an answer from him and more because it had been circling her mind for a while. Still, Cody made an attempt to offer some response.

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe Leshawna's seen him?"

Sadie's head was pounding so hard that it felt as if it were attempting to replace her heart. She released Cody's hand to knead at her temples. Cody, still reveling in his role as a solicitous boyfriend, immediately leapt on the significance of this small action.

"Does your head hurt? Do you want some aspirin?"

"Oh, um, I'm not sure if it's that bad," Sadie said. She smiled, as Cody's solicitousness made her feel well-taken care of.

"No, don't worry about it," he said, hopping to his feet. "I'll go get you some. I'll be right back."

With an enthusiasm that was reminiscent of a puppy, he bounded off to fetch the aspirin for his girlfriend. Sadie slouched into the back of the sofa, her head lightly touching the wall. She waited for Cody in this pose and didn't raise her head when she heard footsteps approaching.

"Girl, have you seen Noah?"

Sadie slowly repositioned her head into a normal posture. Leshawna came into view. "No, I totally haven't. Why?"

A few tiny lines appeared between Leshawna's eyebrows as she settled onto a pose with one hip thrust to the side. "Well, Bridgette said…." She placed one arm on that hip and used the other to count off what she was saying. "That Trent said that Ezekiel said that Noah might have talked to someone who saw Duncan."

In Sadie's not insignificant experience with gossip chains, once the number of people involved exceeded three, someone was usually getting something wrong. "That's, like, kind of a long shot," Sadie said.

Leshawna's sigh was weary. "I know, but I've got to find that boy."

Suddenly, an inkling as to what the identity of Leshawna's crush was began weaseling its way into Sadie's mind. "Why do you care so much?" she said, showing an extraordinary amount of tact for someone who was usually as tactful as a sack of bricks dropped from the Empire State Building. "I'm sure he'll appear eventually."

"Yeah, but I'm scared he'll do something stupid before that," Leshawna said. "I've got to keep him outta trouble before he blows us all up. He was bad with the pranks when he was trying to impress Little Miss CIT, but now that she dumped his ass I'm scared that he'll kill us all."

Sadie nodded sagely, feeling in the know about her friend's love prospects. "Where have you looked for Noah?" she asked. "I think I know where he might be."

"I checked most of the usual places around here," Leshawna said. "And I am not dragging my bootylicious self up all those flights of stairs to check every floor for Noah just because some delinquent flooded the lobby for a dumb prank."

"His room is only on the third floor," Sadie said.

"I checked there," Leshawna said, giving Sadie an odd look. "I went and asked the front desk where he was. But I don't want to check every single floor for him."

"Oh, I gotcha," Sadie said. "I can show you where he might be. It's kinda a long walk though."

"I've got nowhere to be."

* * *

Sadie turned out to be correct in her guess at Noah's location. He sat slouched in a wicker chair in the tiki hut across the island, reading a book with an indigo cover.

"I didn't know this was here," Leshawna said, scanning the tiki hut.

"Hey, Noah," Sadie said, bouncing over to where he sat.

"Where's the boyfriend?"

It gave Sadie a swelling feeling in her chest when he said that. She smiled. "He's not here."

He closed the book. It was Pride and Prejudice, the same one he had been reading the last time Sadie encountered him here. "What do you want?" he said.

"Leshawna wanted to ask you if you'd seen Duncan," Sadie said.

"Oh. I haven't, but Ezekiel said he had."

"Wait, what?" Leshawna said. She began muttering names and counting them off on her fingers. "Bridgette said that Trent said that Ezekiel said that Noah said…."

"Did you really come looking for me based on that?" Noah said, waving his book for emphasis. "All I know is that Ezekiel said that the 'scary doo'd with the big hair nearly ran him oo'ver in the hallway, eh.'"

Sadie giggled at the impression.

"What hallway?" Leshawna said impatiently.

"Probably the top floor hallway," Noah said. "He goes up there when he doesn't want to see anyone."

"Thanks!" Leshawna said over her shoulder, hustling out of the tiki hut.

"When did she start being Duncan's personal police?" Noah asked.

Sadie dragged a wicker chair up to his, making a loud scraping noise against the bottom of the hut, then answered. "I think she likes him," she said conspiratorially, plopping into the chair.

"Hmm, fascinating," Noah said, shaking his head slightly. "I guess you can't account for taste."

"Duncan's not bad," Sadie said.

The right side of his mouth lifted slightly, making him look even more condescending than usual. "Really? You think so?"

"Sure," Sadie said noncommittally, feeling that this might go in a bad direction.

"This is coming from you? The girl that's dating the guy who is possibly as far from Duncan as you can get?" He chuckled quietly.

"Cody's, like, pretty tough," Sadie said, feeling the need to stick up for her boyfriend. After all, he was her _boyfriend._ (She got a thrill from just thinking that word. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend.)

This time, Noah's laughter was several decibel levels higher and lasted for a full five seconds. "Yeah, he's totally badass."

Torn between the urge to snicker and frown, Sadie's mouth contorted into strange positions.

"Laugh. You know you want to," Noah said dryly.

Sadie held out, wrestling to hold a frown in place. Eventually, she succumbed to stifled laughter. "But he's, like, so sweet!"

"Never said he wasn't," Noah said. "It's fine if you like that sort of guy."

"Well, what kind of…." Sadie bit her lip. "What kind of person do you like?"

"Girls. I like girls. You were about to say guy weren't you?" Noah snapped open his book and stared at the page blankly.

"No," Sadie said slowly. "Well, maybe. Sort of, yeah. I'm just used to thinking that you're gay, it's hard to remember that you're not."

Noah didn't respond. Sadie didn't see a bookmark and she doubted that he had opened it directly to the page he'd left off at. His eyes weren't moving either. She assumed that he was using the book as an excuse to ignore her.

"Hey, I'm totally sorry." She leaned down, trying to peer up into his face. "Really, I know you're not."

"Whatever."

A cool gust of wind went through the tiki hut, blowing Sadie's hair across her face. It matched the frigidity on Noah's face.

"So c'mon, what kind of girl do you like?"

"I don't know. A nice one." He was still staring at the book.

Sadie was about to respond when her phone buzzed in her pocket. (Thank god they let her have a phone at the Playa this time! They'd made her sign loads of non-disclosure contract thingies, but it was _so _worth it.) She wiggled it out of the tight pockets of her shorts. Cody had texted her, asking where she'd disappeared to. Oops. She hadn't meant to ditch him like that.

"Cody?"

"Yeah," Sadie said. She glanced up from her quick text telling Cody where she was to meet Noah's eyes for a second. "He was wondering where I was."

"I was wondering how long you guys could survive apart. You're like angler fish," Noah said.

"Those are in Finding Nemo, right?" Sadie asked. She was dismayed when Noah nodded. "Those aren't cute at all!"

"You missed the point."

"What was the point?" Sadie asked. "Wait a sec, I need to text Cody back. I, like, can't do that while I'm talking to you."

"Multi-tasking too much for you?"

"I, like, usually can. You're just distracting me too much."

Noah gave her approximately two seconds to finish texting. "Done yet?"

She pressed the send button with a flourish. "Done."

"Seriously? How much time do you usually spend texting?"

She giggled sheepishly, getting the feeling that her texting speed wasn't quite something that Noah admired. "I like texting," she said. "It's, like, really fast."

"That's really profound."

"But it's true!" she said, her tone slightly whiny. She waved her phone for extra emphasis and accidently dropped it in her enthusiasm. Using some reflexes that were faster than she would have given him credit for, Noah caught the airborne phone only a few inches from her hand. "Thanks," she said, taking it from him. His hands were really cold, she noticed as she took the phone from him. "You have, like, freezing cold hands!"

"Some of us can't sustain high temperatures in our extremities when we're outside for hours," Noah said. "Unlike you. You have an oven for hands."

"Yeah, that's why I always used to hold hands with Katie when we were little." She paused, and her words melted into the air like ice cubes she couldn't refreeze. Her mood dropped into the abyss.

"There you go again," Noah said, leaning forward in the chair. "You act like she's pure evil or something."

"She is," Sadie said to Noah's knees.

"Riiiiiight," Noah said. "You two make absolutely no sense. You're best friends-"

"Not anymore."

"Shhh. I'm giving you advice. I don't care if you take it or not but don't interrupt. Anyway, make up with her. You're best friends. It's actually scary how close you are. Who cares who was wrong-"

"She was."

"You know what? Forget it. Be stupid. Keep being mad at your best friend for absolutely no good reason."

"It is so totally a good reason! She tried to, like, make me leave her and Trent alone and she insulted me!"

It really wasn't possible to look any more incredulous than Noah did at that moment. "Wait, really? That's what you two fought abut? Katie wanted to be alone with her boyfriend? Seriously?"

Sadie was no longer capable of doing anything other than pouting childishly.

"Okay, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Noah continued. He put a hand to his forehead and shook his head in disbelief. "It's really weird that you're mad about that. Part of the point of being someone's girlfriend or boyfriend is so you can be alone with them. Trent probably wanted to be alone with Katie at least a little."

"She insulted me too," Sadie said stubbornly.

"How? Did she say that pink wasn't your color?"

"Pink isn't my color? Pink is so totally my color!"

"That was sarcasm."

"Oh," Sadie said. She started chewing on her lip, feeling silly. "She, uh, said that I hadn't had a boyfriend before."

"Why was that an insult?"

"I dunno. It was just, like, embarrassing."

"Really? Is it? I've never had a girlfriend and I'm not really ashamed of it. High school relationships are stupid anyway."

"Sadie!"

Surprised, Sadie looked up to see Cody run full speed into the tiki hut. He slid to a stop in front of her, nearly tripping over his feet into Noah as he did so.

"Watch it, Codemeister," Noah said. He stood and edged around Cody.

"Where are you going?" Sadie asked.

"Back to my room. I've ruined my eyes enough reading in this light," he said, ambling away.

"You could stay," Cody said half-heartedly.

"No, I've already had my dose of stupid for the day," Noah said. He snickered. "Apologize to Katie, Sadie. That's really the dumbest argument I've ever heard of."

"Maybe," Sadie muttered.

"Whatever."

Stuck in her own thoughts, Sadie stared at the screen of her cell phone. Cody sat in the chair Noah had vacated. "I brought you aspirin," he said lamely, offering Sadie a small white bottle.

* * *

A/N: Forget it. I won't guarantee you any regular updates. I won't even guarantee that I'll finish this story. At least this way I won't be lying to you in the end. I've generally disappeared from the fanfiction circuit and have moved into working on my serious writing. This is sort of my break from that.


	9. Part 3: The Eye of the Storm

**Chapter 7: The Eye of the Storm**

* * *

"Why?" Trent moaned. Dramatically, he thumped his head down against the table. He let out a muffled "Ow."

Sadie wasn't quite sure why she was privy to Trent's personal pity party. But at this point, she was too late to get out of it. Besides, it didn't look like she was required to offer any sort of insight, as Trent had stopped actually enumerating his problems and had begun moaning out single words while rocking back and forth. She scooted her chair closer to Cody's and laced her fingers into his, preparing to settle in for a while.

"Katie," Trent whimpered into the table. Or at least Sadie thought it was Katie's name that he said. She really doubted that he had suddenly developed a new problem with a girl named "Kad-eh", which is what is sounded like through the muffling of the table.

Bridgette continued patting him comfortingly on the back. "It's all right, Trent," she said soothingly. "You could just do something to show her how much you care! Make a big gesture!"

"Waaaaa?" [Translation: Whaaaaat?]

Bridgette appeared to be at a loss. "I'm sure she'll come to her senses if she makes up with Sadie." She flashed Sadie what might have been a pointed glare from anyone else. From Bridgette, the effect was somewhat muted by the half-smile she wore.

"Sad-eeeehhhhh!" [Translation: Sadieeeee!]

Sadie took that as her cue to get some more breakfast, though she was uninterested in actually consuming any more food. As she walked to the buffet table, DJ entered the dining hall.

"DJ!" Sadie cried, running to give him a hug.

"Hey, Sadie!" he said, almost crushing her with the strength behind his hug. "Sorry I didn't say hi last night. We got in kind of late. How've you been?"

"Deej!" Leshawna said excitedly. She shoved out her chair and stood up from where she'd slumped on the table beside Bridgette, as she had lost patience with comforting the inconsolable Trent long before the surfer girl. "Man, I've missed you in this crazy place."

"Missed you too, Leshawna," DJ said. "The island's never the same when you're gone."

"Yeah, it's a heck of a lot quieter," Courtney snapped, appearing from behind DJ. She crossed her arms across her chest and proceeded to stare at the cream tiled floor with a face that was sourer than a quart of unsweetened lime juice.

"Hi, DJ!" Bridgette said, joining the group.

"Triple elimination?" Cody asked, also joining the circle that was growing around DJ.

"Triple?" DJ asked. "It's just me and Courtney."

"But what about Izzy?" Sadie said.

"Izzy? She should have been kicked off instead of me!" Courtney said indignantly, going a bit red in the face. "She disappeared for most of the challenge!"

"She was-" Sadie began. She thought better of revealing Izzy's location to Courtney, who seemed to currently have her temper sitting next to motion-sensing explosives. If anyone said anything even slightly provocative, Courtney was likely to detonate in their face.

Cody grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly, trying to send her a message to stop. She squeezed back, telling him that she'd already come to the realization that she shouldn't mention Izzy to Courtney.

"She was what?" Courtney simmered with resentment and irritation, quite frankly terrifying Sadie.

"Guess what?" Bridgette said brightly.

"What?" several people chorused back, all desperate to avoid the Courtney-explosion from taking place.

"Sadie and Cody are dating now!" Bridgette said, verging on rivaling a game show host's enthusiasm.

"She was what?" Courtney repeated savagely.

"Congrats!" DJ said, able to show genuine excitement even in the face of Courtney related danger.

Sadie was not able to muster up the same level of excitement. Terror was squashing all her capacity for other feelings. Cody likely felt the same level of fear if the choke grip he had on her hand was anything to go by.

"For the love of god, SHE WAS WHAT?"

Boom.

Sadie flinched. Retreat presented itself as the only available option. Unfortunately, before she could break into an all-out run, Duncan put in an appearance. He slouched past the group with Katie following close behind him.

Courtney shoved DJ out of the way, which was impressive considering her size relative to DJ's, and began slowly stomping her way after Duncan. Katie glanced back to see where the noise was coming from and froze when she sighted Courtney, petrified.

Now, Sadie disliked the Nature Channel intensely. She was both too squeamish and too empathetic to stand watching large animals devour smaller animals, which was her impression of what went on during shows on the channel. At that moment, Katie resembled an injured rabbit bleeding between two lions too much for Sadie's weakened anti-Katie sentiment to persist. Sadie darted quickly out of the small crowd, grabbed Katie's elbow, and yanked her into safety.

Courtney neared Duncan. It was quiet enough that an ant could have been heard crawling in the next room.

Everybody had learned what to expect when it came to Duncan and Courtney. Thus, what happened next seemed about as plausible as a killer alien unicorn attack.

"Hello Duncan," Courtney said evenly. Sadie wondered what sort of expression she wore while she gave this calm greeting. Her face only a few seconds before had been terrifying and would be entirely incongruous with her tone now.

"Courtney," Duncan said, barely looking up from where he'd sat.

"How's Gwen?" Courtney asked.

"I dunno," Duncan said.

In the silence that followed, people wondered if Courtney was about to leap on Duncan and claw him into confetti. Instead, she turned and walked away. She had fixed on this awful, syrupy smile, while her eyes were like two jagged icicles.

Duncan kicked his feet up onto an empty chair and leaned back, his face lazily slack.

"What's going on?" Cody whispered.

Those in the huddle by the door whispered responses that conveyed their own lack of knowledge.

* * *

It had been two days and no great disaster had struck the Playa. In fact, there had been a full 48 hours with no drama whatsoever, which was a first for the contestants from the aptly named Total Drama Island. Everyone tensed whenever Courtney and Duncan were in a room together, but the two had strictly ignored each other. Duncan had been missing for the majority of the two days, only deigning to reemerge from wherever he was hiding out to shovel massive amounts of food into his mouth.

The general consensus was that the peace wouldn't last. Courtney's temper would frequently erupt, causing her to yell shrilly at whoever she was talking to with very little provocation.

That afternoon, Sadie and Cody were sitting in the hot tub with Leshawna, Bridgette, Katie, and Courtney. Cody had proved to be a terrible conversation partner for the past fifteen minutes. He had turned bright red the second Sadie had stripped down to her bathing suit and entered the hot tub. What little conversation she'd managed to elicit from him had ground to a halt when she leaned against him slightly. In the end, she'd given up and concentrated on talking to Leshawna and Bridgette while ignoring Katie. Courtney had withdrawn from the group to the farthest point of the oval-shaped hot tub and was staring moodily into the water. Eventually, she pulled herself out and went to get her towel.

Checking that Courtney was definitely out of earshot, Leshawna ushered for the girls to huddle together. "Okay, I know you all are curious too. Does anyone know what the heck is goin' on with that-" She tilted her head towards Courtney's retreating figure. "And Duncan?"

"They've said, like, two words to each other," Katie whispered.

"But Courtney said something about Gwen," Bridgette pointed out.

"Cody, do you know anything? You were voted off right before Duncan," Sadie said.

Cody didn't seem to fully register what she had said. He nodded slowly, staring fixedly down the top of her swimsuit.

Leshawna snapped her fingers. "Focus, boy."

"What?"

Sadie repeated her question. He heard her this time.

"Oh, Gwen?" His voice cracked on her name. "Courtney was always yelling something about Duncan cheating on her with Gwen. Nobody took her seriously."

"I was totally surprised they didn't hook up ages ago," Katie said.

Cody shifted awkwardly. When Sadie looked into his face, he looked distinctly uncomfortable. "Wait," she said. "Did they, like…." She trailed off and stared at Cody expectantly.

He broke quickly. "Okay, you can't tell I told you, but they did a really long time ago. The first night of the first season."

"Who told you?"

* * *

"Cody, you've got to listen to me! I know everything about you. Everything! Even things you don't know about yourself! Gwen doesn't love you as much I do, Cody, she wouldn't have hooked up with Duncan if she did. I went through all the hundreds of hours of outtakes just so I could find every moment of your adorable sleeping face and I saw them! I saw it! Cody? Cody? Are you listening to me? I'm your biggest fan! Remember my name because it's going to have your last name attached to it one day. My name will be Sie-"

* * *

Cody shuddered. "My lips are sealed."

* * *

A/N: These two chapters have been pretty Duncan-centric. But things are going pretty well for Sadie right now, so she's simply a bystander in the drama that's currently occurring. The next chapter should return to being mostly about Sadie stuff, if all goes according to plan. Anyway. Hurricane Courtney has blown into town! I'm excited to figure out the specifics of what comes next. I have a vague idea, which does involve mass destruction and possibly an alien unicorn invasion.


	10. Part 4: Boiling Points

**Chapter 8: Boiling Points**

* * *

The music was playing so loud that Sadie could feel it shaking her very soul. In fact, the bass was actually making her floor vibrate. Geoff would have enthusiastically agreed that it was at the optimum sound level for a party.

Unfortunately, the blue glow of Sadie's phone unsympathetically informed her that it was 2:37 am.

She burrowed deeper into her pillow and blanket cocoon. It had no effect. The sound wasn't even muffled. There was no hope for further sleep unless that awful noise was stopped, post-haste. She moaned sleepily and rolled onto her back, nearly tumbling off the bed.

Ten minutes later, Sadie had mustered enough drive to step into the hallway. She could feel the rolls of sound pulsing under her feet, causing her to wonder where this music was coming from and how loud it was at the source. In the stairwell, it became clear that it was some sort of death metal. Electric guitar echoed up and down the stairwell, converging upon its own sound until it was a huge rolling mass of continuous guitar riffs. As Sadie shuffled down the stairs toward the source of the noise, the sound grew until it was knocking her about the ears with the sheer volume of it.

Three floors down, Sadie met Noah sitting outside the entrance to the main hall of the floor, scowling at the door.

"You can hear it all the way on the third floor?" she yelled.

"What?" Noah yelled.

She bent down next to him and repeated the question, shouting into his ear. He nodded. "It comes through my vent! It's not this loud down there though!" he yelled. "But I was awake anyway!"

"Why?"

He said something she couldn't hear.

"What?"

He repeated himself, but the answer still didn't carry over the music.

"I still can't hear you!"

"I said, I WAS PLAYING VIDEOGAMES!"

"Oh." She shifted back and forth between her feet, staring fixedly at a tiny scuff mark in the shape of an angel wing on the wall beside him. The music thumped a few decibel levels higher, causing her to plug her ears. "WHAT'S GOING ON?"

He yelled something back while shaking his head and gesturing towards his ears. She took that as a sign that he hadn't heard her and, realizing that there was no chance of them hearing each other unless they were mere inches apart, she screamed directly into his ear. "WHAT'S GOING ON?" she yelled again, pointing at the closed door that served as the final barrier against the noise.

He leaned over to yell into her ear. "DUNCAN AND COURTNEY!"

Suddenly, Sadie began to doubt the possibility of getting back to sleep at any point that night. She considered the vibrating door, attempting to conjure up a quick fix to their noise problem. "WHAT CAN WE DO?"

He gave her an exaggerated shrug in response. "IF I KNEW, I WOULD HAVE DONE IT BY NOW!"

The two resumed staring at the door, both wearing similar troubled expressions. Leshawna came charging up the stairs, muttering to herself as she went. Unlike Sadie, who had pulled on a t-shirt and shorts before leaving her room, Leshawna hadn't bothered to change out of her purple pajamas. Despite their slight transparency and femininity, they did nothing to offset Leshawna's hard glare.

Suddenly, the music fizzled out in a burst of static. Leshawna's mutterings became audible as she burst through the door to the hallway.

"If this is who I think it is I'm going to raise a whole lotta-" was all they heard before the door swung shut again.

There was a spurt of a guitar lick. Then, silence once again.

"YOU CRAZY BITCH!"

This was most definitely Duncan's voice piercing the sound barrier. Sadie and Noah exchanged glances. Noah raised his eyebrows. "Classy, Duncan," he said, looking up towards the heavens.

Sadie crept toward the door, feeling a rising sense of terror as she grew closer, as though Duncan and Courtney were going to burst through and hold her at gunpoint. (Actually, that might be less terrifying than some of the arguments Sadie had witnessed them having.) As she crawled, she noticed that her ears were ringing unpleasantly. She huffed out a sigh and cracked open the door slightly, hoping to avoid any other more unpleasant injuries.

A cry of rage from Courtney met her as she opened the door further. She shoved it closed hurriedly and looked back at Noah with panic flooding her.

"That's what you get for being nosy," Noah said, appearing thoroughly amused.

Sadie stuck out her tongue impertinently and ventured to peer back into the hallway, her panic draining away.

"What's going on?"

Sadie flinched so violently that she slammed the back of her head into the doorframe. Three separate voices called out, all with varying levels of concern.

"Sadie!"

"You okay?"

"Oooh, that's gotta hurt-"

"Sadie?"

She uncurled from her cocoon and looked from Cody, who was patting the right side of her head soothingly, to Noah, who crouched on her left. Trent bent over beside Cody, also looking concerned.

"You okay?" Cody asked worriedly.

"Why do I hurt myself so much?" Sadie cried, a sudden feeling that the past few days had been especially klutzy ones washing over her.

A quiet sound came from her left. She wasn't quite sure if she had heard right, but….. She looked over to Noah.

No, he was definitely snickering. "It's, like, not funny!" she said, a whiny note entering her voice.

"Nosy," Noah said.

And then she couldn't help it, she was giggling a bit too. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she said to Cody, brushing away his hand. Cody's face flashed through an expression she couldn't figure out.

"Good to hear," Cody said. He flashed her a gap-toothed smile, reaching for her hand. "You're adorable when you're clumsy."

She smiled back, touched. "Thanks!"

"Well, I'm tired and I haven't been to bed yet," Noah said, sounding oddly chipper. "So I'm going to try to get some sleep while the Princess and the Frog are quiet."

With that exit line, Noah began slowly walking down the stairs. Cody watched him go, looking as though he were trying to figure out some difficult calculus problem without any paper.

"Bye!" Sadie called.

"See you, man," Trent said. "I think I'll head off too. Maybe I'll get some sleep." He gave a heartrending sigh, still wearing the pitiful expression that seemed to permanently have settled on his face these days.

"Night," Cody said. Sadie echoed the farewell.

"Hey, Sadie, do you-" Cody began.

"-SOME GOTH WHORE!" Courtney's voice cut through his words.

Sadie's eyes widened. She cracked open the door and peeked through.

"What's going on?" Cody asked.

"Duncan and Courtney are having a fight," Sadie narrated. "I think Courtney is holding something…. Oh my god, is that a hammer? Yeah, it's a hammer! She's, like, trying to whack Duncan with a hammer! Leshawna's holding her back."

"You serious?" Cody said incredulously.

"It's like a soap opera in there," Sadie whispered, sticking her head farther into the hall. "There's, like, a _huge_ hole in the wall behind Duncan. Wait, I think Courtney got that hammer from the fire extinguisher. At least it's a small hammer-"

Courtney's voice cut through Sadie's narration. "Damn it, why would you-"

"Is she? Is she really?" Sadie said disbelievingly.

"Is she what?"

"She's crying," Sadie said, astounded. "Courtney's crying."

"She's _what_?"

"Oh, she ran away," Sadie said pityingly. "Leshawna looks sort of freaked out."

"Courtney was crying?" Cody said, sounding as though someone had told him that the sun was actually cold. "You're not serious."

"I'm, like, totally serious. Duncan just punched the wall. Oooh! Ouch. I think he just made that hole even bigger." 

* * *

Sadie missed breakfast entirely. She and Cody had gone back to his room soon after the Courtney and Duncan fiasco had finally quieted down. For a while, Sadie had sat on Cody's bed, going through the motions of awkward small talk with him while waiting for him to get over himself and kiss her. Cody still hadn't quite figured out how the whole boyfriend thing worked.

He looked hideously nervous every time she entered his room and would chatter on about something she had absolutely no interest in, like the relative strengths of the starter pokemon in each pokemon game or how funny it was that all of his cousins had names that began with C. She wondered if his 'smoothness' with girls only worked when he knew he had absolutely no chance of being with them. He didn't seem to have any idea what to do when he actually had a girlfriend.

Eventually, she would give up on him ever making a move and she'd kiss him. This time, they seemed to have progressed a bit further. After he sat next to her in awkward silence for a few minutes, he puffed up his chest and mustered his courage.

"Um, could I, um, kiss you?" he asked.

"You don't have to ask, silly," Sadie said, leaning in to kiss him.

He broke away from her suddenly. "What's wrong?" she asked, wondering why he looked so serious.

"Um."

He played with the blanket, balling it up in his fist and releasing it over and over again. "Hey, Sadie?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you, um." He sucked in air and looked away from her. "Do you like me?"

She giggled. The question was on par with "Are Duncan and Courtney insane?" in her mind. They both had rather obvious answers. "Duh."

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Why?"

He shook his head. "Never mind."

It was all very perplexing. She was still confused by where the question had come from when she returned her room at 3:30.

She slept through breakfast, waking up just in time for a late lunch. She joined Bridgette and DJ at the table in the dining hall, still feeling sleepy.

"Did you hear something last night?" Bridgette asked. "I think I woke up at some point because of some noise."

"You're, like, a really deep sleeper," Sadie said. "Duncan and Courtney had this huge fight. It was really loud."

"Aww," Bridgette said sympathetically. "That explains why they weren't at breakfast." She paused and something dawned on her. "Did Leshawna get involved?"

"Yup," Sadie said. "By the way, does she like Duncan?"

"Mmm, not sure," Bridgette said thoughtfully. "I think she might though."

Katie approached the table, carrying a bowl of soup, but froze once she sighted Sadie. Sadie sighed. "I'll see you later," Sadie said, standing.

"Um, okay," Bridgette said. She only realized the reason for Sadie's hasty exit once Katie sat down and became far too engrossed in inhaling her soup. "Seriously?" she said to nobody in particular.

"Huh?" DJ said, still clueless about the majority of the drama that had occurred during his absence.

Sadie dropped into a seat beside Ezekiel a few tables away. "Hi," she said cheerfully.

"Morning," Noah said, smirking. "Make that afternoon, actually."

Ezekiel let out a strangled noise, which Sadie took as a greeting. "I overslept a little," Sadie said. "Did you hear anything last night, Ezekiel?"

From the look that Ezekiel gave Sadie, you would have expected Sadie to be holding an AK-47 to his head and forcing him to recite pi to the 47th decimal place. (Which he could do, but that was beside the point.) "Iuh."

Knowing that Ezekiel had been rendered incapable of answering any questions posed to him by Sadie, Noah cut in. "While I'm flattered that you deigned to join us for lunch, I'd rather not be used as an excuse for you to avoid your other half."

"I'm not avoiding Katie," Sadie proclaimed, stubbornly deluding herself.

"Yeah. Just like Katie's not avoiding you and Trent," Noah said disparagingly, standing to get more food.

Sadie resisted her need to drop her head into the table and thump it against the surface a few times in frustration. She might possibly have considered making up with Katie after Noah had told her to, not that she would admit it. But she didn't know how to go about making up with Katie without riddling her own pride with holes, so she had given up the idea altogether. Strangely, she was actually starting to get used to living without Katie. At first, she had thought that she would eventually combust without Katie there. But then she had gotten to the point where she realized that life without Katie was just…. Well, it was just life without Katie being a permanent presence. She might prefer Katie's company, but it wasn't a necessity.

"So did you sleep well last night, Ezekiel?" she said, having exhausted how much she could allow herself to think about Katie.

"I – ah- me?"

Now Sadie was mystified. Since when was Ezekiel unable to talk to her? It wasn't like their limited conversations in the past had been shining examples of witty repartee, but he'd at least been able to form coherent sentences. "Did you hear anything?" she said, making one last attempt.

"O-okay," he stuttered.

She gave up.

She looked around for Noah and saw him standing at the table she had just vacated, talking to Bridgette. This was surprising; Noah had paid about twenty seconds of attention to Bridgette in all the time he'd spent at the Playa. She stared for a while, but was distracted by her phone buzzing in her pocket.

It turned out to be a text from Leshawna, who was wondering if Sadie would come hang out in her room for a while. "I'll see you later," she said to Ezekiel, texting back a quick confirmation to Leshawna.

"Okay," he said, slightly more confident in his words this time. 

* * *

"So what's up?" Sadie said, lying stomach-down on Leshawna's bed.

Leshawna, who had made the mistake of venturing outside into the pouring rain earlier that morning, was attempting to calm the afro that had resulted from her hair's exposure to the elements. She clamped her hair between the flat iron. "Not much. I just needed some company while I fixed this fro."

"Cool. So what happened last night? I saw Courtney, like, crying," Sadie said.

Leshawna's sigh lasted for several seconds. "Girl, I'd rather not talk about that."

"Sure, that's totally fine," Sadie said. There was a beat of silence before Sadie pulled out her next question. "So do you like Duncan?"

Leshawna nearly dropped the flat iron. "What?" she said, turning to look directly at Sadie. "Where did you get that crazy idea?"

"You don't?" Sadie said, amazed that her theory had been wrong. "Who do you like then?"

Leshawna laughed. "I might as well tell you if you're going to come up with insane guesses like Duncan," she said. "It's DJ."

"What?" Sadie said, sounding as shocked as Leshawna had a few seconds before. "Really?"

"I don't know why you thought I was into Duncan," Leshawna said incredulously. "Who could think that I'd be into that little delinquent? He thinks he's hot stuff, but he's still trippin' worse than a lovesick puppy over Courtney."

There was a knock on the door. "It's open," Leshawna called.

The door opened and slammed shut again in record time. "I did not come up here for nothing!" Bridgette said forcefully from behind it. The door rocketed open and, using more force than Sadie had ever seen her use on a person, Bridgette shoved Katie into the room. "I am sick and tired of watching everyone around here fight all the time!" Bridgette said, almost shouting. "You two were the only people that I could count on to not be killing each other. It doesn't make any sense that you two are fighting!"

Leshawna placed the flat iron down on her dressing table, grabbed her key, and walked to the door. "This is an intervention. We're locking you two in here until you come to your senses and make up."

"But-" Katie began to say.

Leshawna and Bridgette didn't wait for her to voice her concerns and closed the door in her face.

There was a pregnant silence in the room.

"So," Sadie said. She found that she had nothing else to say after that.

"Yeah," Katie said, finding herself in a similar situation. She sat down on the floor and leaned against the door.

Sadie felt that it was her job to initiate some sort of conversation because if they weren't talking, they weren't solving anything. If she was being honest with herself, which had become more difficult in the past few days, she knew she wanted to make up with Katie. It was just that Katie was always the strong one, the pretty one, the one that was apologized to. This was that one time that Sadie wanted Katie to apologize to her. But really, Sadie didn't expect that of Katie and there came a point when someone needed to be mature and glue together the pieces of their friendship.

"What exactly did we fight about?" Sadie asked. "Well, like, I know what we fought about, but I don't get why we're so mad about it."

"I don't know, you just…" Katie trailed off and tugged at one of the loose hairs at the nape of her neck. "You just brought up Keith and I was totally mad that you even talked about that so I said something mean."

Keith. That was really what it was. All this time later, and the two of them were still bothered about that.

"It was a totally dumb argument. It's my fault," Sadie said. She had brought up Keith. She should be the one to apologize.

Katie sniffed audibly, looking like she was about to cry. "Katie, are you, like, okay?"

"I'm so sorry!" Katie cried, rubbing at her eyes with her palms. "I just couldn't deal with everything! You were, like, mad at me and then I was so mean to Trent! I couldn't help being mean to him. I'm so sorry!" She sniffed again, loudly. "You were, like, totally fine without me and I was just like a terrible person."

Almost automatically, Sadie began to say that she hadn't been fine without Katie. Suddenly, she reconsidered her words. She really had been totally fine without Katie. "You were fine without me," she said, rolling off the bed to approach Katie. "Just because we're, like, BFFFL's doesn't mean we have to be together all the time. You don't need me."

"Sadie!" Katie cried, pulling Sadie into a hug. "I missed you so much!"

Sadie's smile could have lit the world. "I missed you too."

* * *

A/N: So. Lots of things to think about in this chapter. I think it turned out pretty epic. That's the end of this act. It was so much fun! Did anybody see Leshawna's crush coming? No? Didn't think so. Mwahahaha. And I kind of lied about the chapter not being so Duncan/Courtney-centric. It didn't quite turn out that way. But I did get a good bit of Sadie time in. Is everyone satisfied with the Sadie/Katie fight resolution? Anybody have any predictions to make? (I find it hilarious that some of you made comments that were unwittingly close to the plan for this story.) Leave a review if you have anything to say!

Until next Act!


End file.
